Cuckoo (16 page)

‘No one said anything about guilt, Laura.'

‘You hate the word, don't you? Guilt demeans a man, so you call it something else. Principle, convenience …'

Charles walked slowly to the wardrobe, where he had hung his clothes on hangers, whereas Laura's strewed the floor. He dragged on his white lawn shirt, immaculately laundered by Apex Valet Service. Perhaps he wouldn't miss her, after all. When they'd started their affair, she'd saved her astringency for the Labour Government, or her husband, instead of turning it on him. She had never nagged or grumbled in the early days, just thrown off her clothes and opened her legs, always ready for him, purring. He didn't have to waste an hour or more, coaxing her, preparing her, as he always did with Frances. There was no need to say he worshipped her, or that life was dust and ashes in her absence, or all the other crap his wife expected. Laura would have laughed, said, ‘Shut up and get on with it,' and then come quickly and efficiently. Other women's orgasms were something of a nightmare. Half the time you suspected they were pretending, and the other half they didn't even have one, though they still made those wild noises, so that you feared you'd ruptured them, until you discovered they were only crawling along to ecstasy in bottom gear and were never going to make it. Even with Frances, there were doubts. She seemed to come – sometimes – and so she bloody ought to, after all the time he lavished on her, but there was no full stop, end of paragraph. It took him an age to get her there, and then twice as long returning her to base. Laura didn't need all that after-sales service; soothing and reassuring and saying, ‘Yes, wasn't it wonderful,' but just rolled over and went to sleep, or got up and poured them both a Scotch.

But things were changing. Already Laura had started interfering and complaining. If she refused to lie low for the moment, well, there were always other Lauras. His home life was far too precious to be sacrificed. He tensed, felt her prowling hands again. She'd come up right behind him, and was trying to ease his Y-fronts down.

‘No,' he said abruptly.

She knelt in front of him, rubbed her head against his thighs. She was teasing him now, kissing everything except his cock. It annoyed him, really, the way it always responded to her, even now, when they were meant to have finished, and he had an investors' meeting to attend in half an hour. He was stiff again and she was sucking him, at last, with as much relish as she sucked an ice cream cornet. Frances didn't like ice cream, and frankly, he understood the way she felt. With Laura he got the best of both worlds; she tongued him (to perfection), but didn't demand it back. Laura wasn't mercenary, except out of bed. Maybe some other guy sucked her off – certainly not her husband, who preferred horse-racing to sex – but he didn't want to know. So long as he didn't have to push his own face into some steamy, strange-smelling thicket, he wasn't complaining. Laura thrived on thickets, and he could always pay her in silver.

The silver chain he had bought her dangled against his thighs and distracted him from the wilder sensations between them. He let his head fall back against the wardrobe, gripped the wooden doors.

It was hard work, a second climax. Once, the sight of Laura's naked breasts had been enough to make him come, but even mistresses palled. He shut his eyes and summoned the new office secretary from her typewriter. Obediently, she slid out of her dress and took him in her mouth, her lips taking over from Laura's. It was a slow, arduous climax, demanding every ounce of concentration. But the more effort he put into it, the more gratifying it was – he found that with most things in life. His entire body was joining in. His head felt light and spinning, his hands and feet had disappeared. He was only a pillar, thrusting and thrusting, reduced to one wild stab of pleasure. He was no longer being gentle, or sparing the new secretary's small, shy virgin mouth, no longer cared if he choked her. She was only a slot, a socket, something he controlled. He slid almost out and felt the air cold for a second against his cock, then in again – warm and burning-wet. Out, then in; cold, then hot. His body was a force, a rhythm, reduced to six inches of sensation, yet those six inches bigger than the six-storey hotel.

He hadn't believed he could come another time – there was nothing left inside him – but Avril-from-the-office had turned nothing into a tidal wave. Her prim lips were dragging out of him the entire Atlantic Ocean. Everything he owned was in her mouth – his sperm, his guts, his money, power, spurting down her throat. He had grabbed her head, and his fingers were digging into her scalp, as he thrashed out the last dregs. Then, suddenly, there was only an empty bag between his legs and Laura's auburn hair twisted between his fingers, and his own breathing, dangerously loud.

Avril had tripped back to her IBM Executive. It was Laura who was licking her lips, as she knelt back on her heels. She was a swallower, thank God. After a climax a man felt foolish enough, without the woman spitting him out or washing him off. Laura made the whole thing acceptable, bridged the aching gap between ecstasy and self-disgust. She gulped down sperm in the no-nonsense way she ate oysters at Wheeler's; wiped her mouth, re-applied her lipstick, and ten minutes later, she'd be discussing the retail price index like an intelligent colleague.

It certainly made it easier. He could zip up his pants and return to more important things, cross sex off the list and put it away till next time. Frances expected full-scale action replays with commentary and flashbacks. You couldn't fit her in between a hectic morning with a bankrupt shipping company and a three o'clock investors' meeting. And she wasn't one for mouths.

‘It's such a waste of sperm,' she objected, on one of the rare occasions they'd lifted their veto on oral sex. ‘You can't have a baby that way.'

Christ! Those bloody babies, they got in the way of everything. That was the reason he'd first escaped to Laura. Sex for Laura was an end in itself, not a baby-manufacturing process. She didn't keep bleating on about embryos or oocytes, or litter the bed with charts and turn the whole performance into dreary paperwork. For Frances, he'd become a stud, a prize stallion to fill her belly, rather than her cunt. Thank God, it didn't fill. He didn't want another Magda.

He slumped down suddenly on the edge of the bath, had returned to the bathroom for the third shower of the lunch-break. Magda – beautiful and terrifying. A stranger made out of his body, with his own chromosomes staring out at him through her dark, angry eyes. What he felt for Magda must be somewhere near love, whatever love was. Yet the child had brought only misery – not only to himself, but now to his mistress and his wife. He had hurt all three women, and yet he loved them all, to some degree. Better not use the word ‘love' – he couldn't define it, and he suspected words that resisted definition. Besides, how could you love someone and destroy her in your own mind, as he did with Frances? Ripped her to shreds and served them up to Laura as a peace-offering; criticized her maternal urges and then expected her to mother the child he'd had by another woman. He closed the bathroom door. He wanted the mirrors to himself, not half a dozen Lauras sneaking into them, fishing out stockings from under the bed, or stubbing out fag-ends in dirty coffee cups.

Frances folded her clothes and didn't smoke. Frances was neat, reliable and punctual, and he had made her so. One of the reasons he loved Frances (that forbidden word again) was that he had helped create her, built her up from small, promising beginnings, like his practice or his garden. All three of them were blooming, and it was credit to him. But now he had blighted Frances – with Magda. The whole tidy garden had been trampled on and bulldozed.

For years, Magda had been only a faded photo in his double-locked office drawer; a monthly cash transfer from his bank to Piroska's; expensive presents for birthday and Christmas, ordered by phone from Harrods and sent direct. Plus some small, sticky residue of guilt, pride and fear, locked away even more securely than the photograph. Piroska had hardly bothered him for months – the odd letter, the occasional gift, school reports duly forwarded and returned. He kept her now only as a standing order on his bank account.

Then everything had changed. Piroska sprouted teeth and claws, and a Hungarian lover with a good line in invective. He couldn't refute their joint accusations. Yes, he had neglected Magda, left Piroska to tarnish in a Streatham backstreet, while he shone centre-stage in Surrey. For a nightmare week, he wrestled with past and present, trying to square duty with expedience.

And then he saw his daughter. Eleven years had turned her from a faded photo into a woman with all her outlines sharp. He felt something dangerously like desire, struggled to change it into pride. This dazzling creature was his own flesh, his own achievement. He had fashioned her out of his body, and was experiencing the thrill of ownership. He wanted the world to bow down and acknowledge her as his. She was a priceless possession which must be restored and overhauled, moved into a more favourable environment. She would only lose value, rusting where she was.

The stumbling block was Frances. He couldn't force this new acquisition on his wife and expect her to groom and polish it, along with all the rest. For seven anguished days, he fought against Miklos, Piroska and his new paternal pride – and lost. He couldn't fail to lose, because fundamentally, he wanted Magda with him. It wasn't simply duty, though there was some of that as well. Piroska had done her stint for fifteen years, without much help from him. But there was a deep desire to be completed by a daughter, vindicated even. He wanted almost to flaunt his fertility in front of Frances. He hated her constant innuendos that it was his deficiencies which prevented her from conceiving, that he was somehow less than a man because he couldn't sire a child. Well, here was his child and his manhood, all in one. He tried to turn it to Frances' own advantage, to offer her the child she craved, without the mess and disruption of a baby. No broken nights, nor nursery tantrums, but a ready-made family, to meet her desperate need. After the first shock, she might even come to welcome it. She could graft her maternal urges on to Magda, and turn
fait accompli
into deep fulfilment.

It hadn't happened. There were still broken nights and nursery tantrums. One simple child had turned their whole existence into a battleground, with Frances as the casualty. Magda hadn't graced their life as he'd imagined, reclining elegantly beside him on the sofa, alluring and intelligent, listening to Beethoven sonatas when he could spare the time, or joining him for a few quick holes of golf. All she'd reclined on was his Queen Anne gate-leg table – cracked it right across – and used four-letter words when he switched off the wild din she claimed was music. It hurt to see his own flesh refusing to wash her hair or cut her nails, refusing even to turn into his daughter. And Frances making things still worse by constant recrimination and complaint.

He slapped the soap against his thighs, working it into a lather. He wished to God he could wash all women away – their shrill, insistent voices, their continual contrariness, their infuriating habit of serving up guilt with dinner, or grudges with sex. The soap slid away from him and skidded along the bottom of the bath. He grabbed it angrily, digging his nails into the bar, as if to pay it back. Even if he escaped from all his females, there'd be more within a week. He didn't want women – they were an expense and a distraction – yet still they wormed their way into his life, and some part of him clung on to them. Even when Magda was born, he'd been glad she was female – as glad as he could be in the circumstances.

He remembered his first glimpse of her in that sterile Streatham hospital. A dark head and a white blanket. And Piroska radiant and transformed, her breasts like soft white cheeses. Frances was right to want a baby – there was something miraculous about it. That was why she angered him by always dragging the subject under a spotlight, probing it, examining it, reminding him of his own inadequacies both as a father to Magda, and in failing to become one in their own relationship.

He stepped out of the shower and rubbed himself briskly with the largest yellow towel. No point agonizing. Too much speculation was a danger and a waste of time. The relationships he'd planned as a refreshment from the pressures of his work were turning into further stresses, his personal life becoming as fraught as his professional one. He had to take a stand. Basically, it was a question of priorities. Each problem, each woman, must be assigned to its pigeon-hole, and dealt with in order of importance. Worry itself was profitless, and guilt a sign of moral bankruptcy. It was only females who confused him and sex which weakened him. In his study, or his office, he didn't give way to spineless introspection. He must return to the office and his own consummate control. If he left in five minutes, he'd have time to draft a report before the meeting. And the wasted lunch-hour could be repaid in midnight oil.

Laura trailed in, wearing one stocking and a bra, and slipped her hands underneath the yellow towel. He caught her wrists and held them.

‘I've got exactly three minutes,' he said and kissed her throat. The kiss took just two seconds – he could spare those. They'd be the last she'd be getting for a while.

‘Can't you spare me even a minute, Charles?'

‘Well?' Charles was peering over his amplifier, adjusting the balance of the speakers, fiddling with the bass control.

‘No, sitting down properly. I need to talk to you, want your full attention, for a change.'

‘Why say a minute, then, when you mean half an hour?' Charles removed the Schoenberg and returned it to his alphabetical record storage cabinet, after Scarlatti and before Schütz.

‘I'm sorry. I suppose I should have booked a formal appointment. But considering it's your daughter I want to talk about …'