Chapter Nineteen
STUART, NINE YEARS EARLIER
Her name runs through my head at all hours of the day and the night.
Jessamine Jessamine Jessamine.
The tragic, pretty woman with the strange lace-up shoes, the undyed gray hairs running through her mousy bob, the shimmer of mauve lipstick that makes her look as if she just got out of a cold swimming pool.
Under those odd clothes, beneath the deathly lipstick, there is a woman beyond anyone’s uninformed imaginings.
I knew it! I had wanted to yell when she first dropped her clothes onto the floor in front of me that late-December afternoon.
I knew you’d have that body. And I knew that you’d be wild, your hands all over me, your eyes burning.
And I knew that whatever it was that was happening, in that moment—warm champagne still burning at the back of my throat, the bass of the movie on the TV downstairs still echoing through the walls, the distant sound of coughs and muted voices, the click of Hugo’s claws against the floorboards outside Jessamine’s bedroom door—I knew it was wrong.
I knew she was wrong; I knew we, the two of us, were wrong; the union we made of ourselves and our addictions and our brokenness was wrong. But it felt so incredibly good.
“Mum?”
A voice had sounded outside the door, soft and uncertain.
Jessamine had grabbed her dress and thrown it over her head.
“What?”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Hugo’s out here. He looks like he wants something.”
“Well, then, take him downstairs and give him something.”
“Like what?”
“Some cold turkey maybe. Or let him out. I don’t know.”
We had both stopped breathing, then exhaled again as we heard the child’s footsteps going down the stairs, the dog following behind.
As I’d meandered homeward through Hampstead that night I checked the time: 10:08. Still time for a pint or two before bed.
I enjoyed those pints, post-conjugal, post-whatever-the-hell-it-was-that-had-just-happened.
They tasted extra sweet. I walked back to my squat an hour later, the paving stones rolling pleasantly beneath my feet, the Christmas lights on the high street spangling into fireworks, with a sense that maybe I was in love, a sense that life had shifted, moved.
A young guy was in my room when I walked in. I didn’t know who he was; he was curled up on my futon in a gray T-shirt and jeans, dark hair spread out around his head, one sock on, one sock off. I slept in my armchair that night. I slept well.
New Year’s Day is a Sunday. The sky is dark blue, the sun is strobing white through the bare branches of the tree outside the window, and the boy is still on my futon and, pleasant as he is, I am sick of sharing my space with him.
I’m nearly forty, I’m too old for this shit.
He’s the son of Drew, the guy who runs the squat.
Not that there’s meant to be any kind of hierarchy here, but Drew was the first person to live here with his wife and kids when they were small.
Then the wife left, then the kids left, then the rest of us arrived, and now his youngest son is back and I’m pretty sure he’s promised my room to him.
I cross paths with Drew coming out of the bathroom that morning.
He’s been avoiding me for four days but now he can’t.
“What’s the deal?” I say. “With your boy? I mean, I don’t mind sharing the space but I’m pretty sure it’s not his dream come true, having some old fart snoring in an armchair in his room every night.”
“Yeah.” Drew rubs at the stubble on his chin. “It’s not ideal. I don’t know, I mean, it’s only going to be a couple of weeks. He’s having some kind of crisis and I’m trying to persuade him to go back to uni. Is there anywhere else you could…?”
I don’t want to rock the boat. This is the nicest place I’ve ever lived.
Well, apart from my childhood home that is.
So I nod, feigning nonchalance. “Yeah,” I say.
“No problem.” Inside I’m thinking: Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I only just got back from my brother’s and frankly I’m not that keen to return.
We did all the goodbyes, farewells, see-you-soons, let’s-not-leave-it-so-long-next-times.
They’ve only just put away my sofa bed, folded away my bedding, felt the pleasantness that accompanies the departure of a houseguest. I have friends all over the city, but not friends I can stay with for two weeks.
“Give me a couple of days,” I say. “And I’ll be out of your hair.”
The minute she opens the door to me, I think I might have made a mistake. Her eyes flash with relief. But also, fury. Disgust.
I wave a bottle of wine at her, and I see the fury dissipate, the thirst obliterate the disgust. “What do you want?” she says.
“I want to see you.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
She sighs loudly, exasperated, as if I should know what she’s talking about.
“Are you annoyed with me?”
She sighs again. “I’ve never been humped and dumped before. Not ever.”
“Humped and…?” I can’t help but laugh. “Is that what you think happened?”
“Well, it is what happened.”
“It’s only been four days.”
“Four days is a long time after something like that.”
“Something like…?” I smile. “Well, in which case, I apologize. I thought I should leave you alone, it being New Year and everything. To be honest,” I say, not entirely disingenuously, “I thought maybe you’d regret it.”
She gives a tiny shake of her head; her eyes dart from left to right. “Not really,” she says.
“Well, can I come in?” I wave the bottle again.
She shrugs and then reaches behind her to buzz the gate open.
“Are you alone?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Mum’s taken Daisy to the cinema. They won’t be back for a couple of hours.”
I step through the door, leaning down to pet Hugo, then follow Jessamine into the kitchen. She immediately reaches for the wineglasses. I wonder how long it’s been since she had a drink.
“When does Daisy go back to school?” I ask.
“Wednesday.” She unscrews the cap from the bottle and then there is the urgent glug glug of wine into two tiny glasses, a perfunctory cheers, a swooshing sigh of relief. I see the color return to her cheeks, a flash of something across her eyes. “Well,” she says, “where’ve you been?”
“At home.”
“Where’s home?”
I tell her about the squat near the Royal Free, my attic room, the dark-haired boy called Frankie.
“Where are you going to stay?”
I sigh, top up her wineglass. “No idea, to be honest.”
She cups the back of her neck with her hand and nods. “Do you want to go upstairs?”
I start slightly but then I nod. “Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Absolutely. Lead the way.”
She grabs the wine bottle; I grab the glasses; I follow her up the stairs, Hugo hot on my heel.
Even though I know what to expect this time, it’s still a raw surprise when I see her naked.
She is basically perfect. I mean, obviously, there’s wear and tear, she has some scars, a large one near her groin that I assume is from a C-section.
But in terms of what I like in a woman’s body, she has it.
Skin that looks as if it never saw a ray of sun, not once, that kind of yogurt color, with dips and troughs, pink nipples on soft small breasts, yielding flesh on sturdy thighs, like a Rubens nymph, and no, I don’t know why I like these old-fashioned bodies, maybe it’s because you don’t get to see them anywhere.
Modern bodies are on view everywhere with their taut tanned thighs, furious chiseled bones, tight torsos, sinewed arms. I can see that body anywhere.
But these secret bodies, bodies from a time gone by…
there is something deeply rooted in my psyche—maybe a relic of a past life, a seventeenth-century version of me who was rampaging through the back streets of gaslit London fucking maidens in rancid petticoats—that wants this body, this creamy, forgiving creature who looms above me now, mousy bobbed hair swishing, a look of grim determination on her face as she puts me inside her, rocks me back and forth, and while most of me is lost, mesmerized, stunned with pleasure and lust, there is another small part of me asking myself why. Why?
Why am I doing this?
Why am I here?
But then she has folded herself flat against me and is running her tongue in circles around my nipples, and how, I think, how does she know that I love that and why is she so good, and why does everything fit together so well, and that skin, and the red heat in those cheeks and the fury in her eyes and then I stop asking why.
“How old are you?” she asks me afterward.
She is not buried in the crook of my arm, hot cheek pressed against my shoulder, running her fingers through my chest hair. She is far away from me, on the other side of the bed, her knees pulled up to her chin, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Coming up to thirty-nine.”
“Why are you single?”
I shrug, top up our wineglasses, pass one to her. “Because I like it.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah. I like being single.”
“Do you sleep with loads of women?”
“No. At least, not as many as I’d like. I mean… look at me. I’m not exactly God’s gift.”
She shrugs and drinks her wine, leans down heavily to one side to rest the glass on the floor at the foot of the bed, and then straightens again. “You’re all right. I mean, you’re not fat. You’re kind of…” But she runs out of words.
I know I’m not a great catch. Nearly forty, living in a squat, with a low-level drinking problem, a paunch, and a swiftly encroaching thin patch at the back of my head (which my nephews took great delight in pointing out to me numerous times over the Christmas break).
I haven’t done any exercise since I was a teenager and I’m kind of hopeless.
But people like me. Women like me. People feel safe around me.
So, yeah, that can go a long way, making people feel safe.
Especially with women who’ve had more than their fair share of men making them feel scared.
“Thanks.” I say. “Shucks.”
“But don’t you ever get lonely?”
“Nope. Do you?”
“I’m lonely all the time.”
“But you have your kid. Your mum.”
She shakes her head emphatically, reaching down again for her wineglass.
“No,” she says firmly. “No. A mother is not a substitute for a partner. And neither is a kid. A partner”—she squeezes her eyes shut and sets her jaw hard—“is everything. A completion. An answer.” The wine is suddenly gone, tipped down her throat in one fell swig.
“When did you start drinking?” I ask.
She throws me a look. “About an hour ago,” she says.
I laugh roughly. “No. I mean, habitually. When did it start?”
She narrows her eyes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I sigh and reach across the bed, cup her kneecaps with my hands, softly. “Come on,” I say gently. “You know. Don’t make me say it.”
She shudders and pulls her legs away from my hands. “You know, they’ll be back soon. It’s probably…”
I sigh heavily and lean back into her pillows. “Ah. Yeah. I’d better get out of here.” I start to pull the duvet away from my body.
She says, “No.”
I look at her questioningly.
“Don’t go. Stay. I mean, stay here.” She gestures at the bed. “You haven’t got anywhere to sleep tonight, have you? So sleep here. But… my daughter, my mother. You’ll have to stay low. For now. My little secret.”
Jesus Christ, I should have said no.
I SHOULD HAVE SAID NO.
But she was right. I had nowhere to sleep. And her house was warm. Her bed was soft. Her body was perfect. So I said, “Are you sure?” and she said, “Of course I am.”
And I said, “Thank you. I promise you I’ll be quiet.”