‘Please don’t come inside me,’ she said.
Suddenly still, they lay there in silence for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘Did you come inside me?’
He was not even sure. He had been so preoccupied with other things… ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
She laughed and sat up straight, pulling her skirt into place. ‘What do you mean you don’t know?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe…’
‘You don’t know whether you came?’
‘No.’
She laughed again and said, ‘I can’t believe this.’
‘What?’
‘Is that just
normal
for you?’
‘No…’
She was shaking her head. ‘I… I never let anyone come inside me. I’ve only ever let one person do that. Someone I was totally in love with.’
For a moment he wondered who this man was. Then he stood up, stumbling in his lowered trousers. ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘You don’t know whether you
came
?’ She sounded shocked, on the verge of tears.
‘I’m not sure. I think so.’
‘That’s just weird.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘What if I get pregnant?’
‘You’re not likely to get pregnant…’
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean you’re not likely to get pregnant. It’s not likely. From one… you know…’
She seemed to be looking at something on the floor, though outside the shape of light that spilled in from the hall it was too dark to see anything. ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ she said. He put out his hand and touched her. When he tried to hug her she stood stiffly in his embrace. He sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Leaving him there, she went to the bathroom, evidently to settle the question of whether or not he had ejaculated inside her. He heard the toilet flush, fistfuls of water splash in the sink. When she unlocked the door, she picked up her things from the floor in the hall and went into the living room.
The standard lamp was on and she was standing next to his desk, inspecting her tights. She did not look at him.
‘I’m sorry…’ he said.
Still without looking at him, and in a more quivering-lipped tone than the first time, she said, ‘This isn’t what I expected.’
The wind howled in the dark shaft over the skylight.
He stood there, wondering what to do.
‘I think I’m going to go,’ she said quietly.
However, she did not put on her tights. She was still standing there next to the desk. She seemed to be waiting for him to say something. ‘Don’t go. Please don’t go,’ he said, shocked into total sincerity. ‘Please. That would be terrible.’
*
In the morning she had a shower and, when she was dressed, he said he would walk her to Russell Square station.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded quickly. ‘M-hm.’
He followed her out into the frigid shade of the area, where the dead leaves were veined with ice, and watched her walk up the metal steps. On the pavement, in a flare of sunlight, she waved to him, but when they spoke on the phone the next day, she sounded strange, and vague, and as if her heart was not in what she was saying. He persuaded her to see him on Sunday—she wasn’t free, she said, until then—and then when they spoke on Sunday afternoon, she said she was tired, that she had been working since eight in the morning, and how about meeting some other time?
There was a longish silence.
He said, ‘Look, I want to see you. Today. Please.’
She sighed. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. I look shit. And I won’t be much fun to be with. I’ve got to do some ironing…’
‘Why don’t we meet at your place then?’
‘Well…’ she laughed. ‘If you don’t mind watching me iron.’
‘I don’t mind watching you iron,’ he said.
On the tube he started to wonder whether he should have forced it like that. She very obviously did not want to see him. For a few minutes he loitered in the foyer of Angel station, wondering what to do. Then he set off up Essex Road in the sleet, and when she opened the door he was soaking wet.
Her flat was on the upper floor of a modest terraced house on Packington Street. The downstairs entrance hall was a narrow moth-eaten space full of unloved objects, from where severely straitened steps went up to a landing under a light bulb and the plain front door of the flat.
‘Do you want a towel?’ was the first thing she said.
He said he did, and while she went for one he waited in the hall, and then followed her into the living room.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I’m okay. Wet.’
‘Do you want some wine?’
She had already started on the wine. He took off his jacket and towelled his soaking hair. He had a sense, handing her the towel, exchanging it for wine, that things were not quite as hopeless as he had thought. It had started with the way she looked at him when she opened the door, the way she took a moment to let him fill her eyes. And she was not ironing; there was no sign of the ironing board. Still, when the wine was finished he expected to be encouraged to leave—so he was surprised when instead she said, ‘Do you want to get something to eat?’
‘Sure.’
‘There’s this Indian,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Fine.’
Leaving the house he wondered whether this was the moment to touch her, whether even to try and kiss her. Something about her posture—hands shoved in pockets, shoulders hunched—prevented him. The pavements shone wetly as they walked. They stopped in front of the Taste of India on Essex Road, under the sopping green awning, and he touched her for the first time as they went in. It was not much of a touch—letting her precede him through the plate-glass door, he placed his hand lightly on her back for a moment. She might not even have felt it through the substantial white puffa jacket she was wearing. Inside, in the tired velvet shadows and quiet, seemingly formless sitar music, they studied takeaway menus. There was a palpable Sunday-night atmosphere. Standing there, poised to take their order, the waiter yawned.
While they were waiting, he touched her a second time. Sitting side by side at a table near the entrance—a stained tablecloth, plastic flowers—they had lapsed into silence and he put his hand on her thin jeaned thigh and stroked the fabric a few times with his thumb. She did not seem surprised. She did not tense up or move her leg. She just lifted her eyes from the Taste of India carpet and looked at him steadily for a minute with no particular expression on her face—or an expression, at most, of tolerant indulgence. Then the smiling waiter approached with their supper.
They ate it with the television on. Her flatmate, Summer, was there—she had been away for the weekend with some man; her suitcase was still in the hall. He had not even known of her existence until they found her sitting on the sofa with her small stockinged feet on the old leather pouf, watching TV. Her presence had the effect of taking most of the interesting tension from the situation—things seemed flat now that she was there—and when Katherine went to do the washing-up, leaving them to talk amongst themselves, he felt that it was probably time for him to leave.
He found her standing at the sink in the kitchen. She may not have noticed he was there until, stepping up to her, he put his hands on her waist. When she did not move even then, he went a step further and, tucking down the tag of her sweater, kissed her exposed neck.
‘Do you want to stay the night?’ she said, still sloshing things in the sink.
‘Do you want me to?’
‘It’s up to you.’
He seemed to think for a moment. ‘Yes, I’d like to.’
‘Okay.’
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Am I sure?’
‘Are you sure it’s okay? I don’t want to stay if you don’t want me to.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, freeing herself from his hands, which had stolen onto her stomach, and taking a dishcloth.
Her pale hair was tied up severely, showing the high pallor of her forehead, and her face had a freshly scrubbed look. She was wearing a loose T-shirt and old-fashioned pyjama trousers. ‘I’ve still got my period,’ she announced, turning down the duvet.
‘Okay.’
Sitting there, he found it slightly difficult to see what the point of his presence was—she was under the duvet now, and did not seem to pay him any attention as he slowly undressed and joined her. She was lying on her side, facing away from him, and she did not move when he put out his hand and sent it down the shallow slope of her side and up the steeper hill of her hip, feeling under his fingertips the filled, homely fabric of the pyjama trousers.
‘Are you sure you want me to stay?’ he said.
A sudden susurration of the sheets—she turned. In such proximity her face looked different. His perusal of it, and his silence, seemed to unnerve her and shaking her head on the pillow, she said, ‘What?’
‘Nothing… I like looking at you.’
She smiled very slightly and he kissed her. She let him. She let him kiss her unparted lips, once, twice, and even then it seemed no more than a sort of tolerant indulgence, until her mouth melted open and for a few seconds seemed to be searching urgently for something inside his. His hands were inside her T-shirt. ‘I don’t want to have sex,’ she said. ‘I told you, I have my period. And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t want to have sex.’
They lay still for a while.
She put her hand on his face and said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m pleased you insisted on staying.’
‘Insisted? I didn’t insist…’
She smiled. ‘Okay, you didn’t insist…’
Taking it from his face, he kissed the palm of her hand—plump and mild and slightly damp—and that was the start of a tortuously slow exploration, an exploration
sub specie aeternitatis,
of the sense of touch.
Towards morning—they were naked on the mattress, their senses painfully peeled in the warmth of the storage heater—she muttered, ‘I don’t think I can not have an orgasm,’ and letting her knees fall open, quietly started to play with herself.
*
Suddenly, unexpectedly, no longer even seriously hoped for, there were a few lovely days. Sun-fire on frozen ponds. Everything seemed okay then.
Then on Saturday afternoon, towards the end of the afternoon, when the winter daylight was starting to fail, he met her at Angel tube station, and there was something wrong. He had sensed it earlier in the day when they had spoken on the phone, and when he met her at the station and tried to kiss her she just turned and started to walk away.
They had walked some way up Essex Road—past Packington Street, were in front of the open facade of Steve Hatt the fishmonger, standing on the stained pavement in a faint sea smell—when she stopped and said, ‘What are we doing? Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Where
are
we going?’
‘I thought you wanted to get a drink,’ she said.
‘Is that what you want to do?’
‘Isn’t that what you want to do?’… ‘Do you want to get a drink?’ she said.
‘I don’t mind. What do you want to do?’
If it was a drink he wanted, she insisted on returning to Angel, and they were nearing Islington Green, still in silence, when he stopped and said, ‘Look, if you’re not going to say anything, maybe I should just go.’
She went very still.
‘You’re not saying anything either,’ she said half-heartedly. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know…’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I feel a bit weird.’
‘What do you mean you feel a bit weird?’
‘I’ve been feeling a bit weird this afternoon, since earlier.’
‘I don’t know what you mean when you say
a bit weird.
’
‘Let’s just get a drink,’ she said. ‘Let’s just get a drink and see how it goes.’
‘See how it
goes
?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
He followed her into the nearest pub. Not a particularly nice pub. The Nag’s Head. And she still seemed to be feeling quite weird. While they stood at the bar waiting to be served, surrounded by screens shouting about sport, she started to laugh. Perhaps it was just the fact that they had ended up
there,
in the Nag’s Head, a straightforward pub with a passion for sport, and a sour smell of lager soaked into wood. They sat down at a long table which they had to share with some other people. She seemed strangely exhilarated. There was a strong flush in her pale skin.
He was wary. He pressed her on what she had meant outside when she said she was feeling a bit weird.
She stopped smiling. ‘I just… didn’t… feel anything,’ she said.
‘You didn’t feel anything?’
‘No.’
‘What do you mean? When?’
‘This afternoon.’ Seeing the expression on his face, she took his hands in hers and said, ‘It was just something weird. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry.’
‘This isn’t just what you’re like, is it?’ he suggested, smiling sceptically.
She laughed and shook her head. ‘No.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Over the second pint they started to talk about other things— he told her how he had once owned a pizza-delivery franchise nearby, and how he had mortgaged it to produce a film (directed by Julian Shoe—the name made her laugh, he swore he wasn’t making it up), which had never found a distributor, forcing him to sell the pizza franchise and work instead as an estate agent at one of the snootier Upper Street outfits—Windlesham Fielding, pinstriped suits moving in the shop window. Though she knew by then that he had old links with the postcode, this was the first time they had been mapped out for her. He told her how—after a stint in the City which ended in minor scandal—he had set up on his own as an Islington estate agent. For a while he was successful. He owned up to having owned a Porsche—to having been a Porsche-owning estate agent. (She laughed at that.) He said he had lived in several thousand square feet of warehouse flat overlooking the canal. He had not seen the place for years and he suggested they walk over there tomorrow.
‘Okay,’ she said.
It was dark when they left the Nag’s Head. Under towering streetlights, the junction at Angel pumped people and vehicles like an exposed heart.
He was sufficiently upset by what had happened to seek a meeting on Monday with Toby, at whose wedding they had met. Toby had known her since university; they had been at Cambridge together, had shared history tutorials as undergraduates at Trinity. And Toby had something to tell him. She was married. Separated for a year or so, but still, so far as he knew, married. Her husband—
he
had left
her,
was Toby’s feeling—was some sort of photographer. Fraser King.