I Take You (18 page)

‘Look at your hair – your clothes! Where have you been?’

‘In the garden. It was so wild and wonderful with all the thunder and the lightning. The sky came roaring down. Did you hear it, Cliffy, did you? I was stuck and then just thought sod it! I ran out into the rain with no clothes on! Can you believe it? Couldn’t resist.’

Cliff cannot comprehend. Any of it. His wife of the past few weeks, her new body, tallness, wildness, laugh, this crazed reckless confidence. ‘You are mad. You must be. You are going mad. Suppose anyone saw. The gardener!’

‘Well, he would have got the absolute fright of his life and run off as fast as he could. Quite completely spooked and utterly not able to cope. No one is as mad as me,’ she declares, laughing and taking the champagne glass from Cliff’s hand and tipping it up in an extravagant sip.

Cliff stares at the long, exposed throat of his wife, transfixed. Appalled. Admiring. She looks so glowing and healthy, so brimming with life. Unbound. After the stasis of this house, their new life. Perhaps this is what works, perhaps there will be a lot more of this. Perhaps he can use it.

‘Do you like your body?’ he asks, quite dispassionately.

‘I
love
it,’ she proclaims joyously, thinking of Mel’s declaration that she has the best arse that ever existed. Cliff remembers back to a very different body, a very different wife.

‘What’s caused this sudden change in you? Running out into the rain, putting on weight, laughing like a mad woman or a naughty child. Is it the summer’s heat? Anticipation of a holiday, desire for sensation, change, boredom, what?’

‘All of it! The whole damned lot! Should I change for you, my darling, become very quiet, and meek, is that what you want? How you’d like it. The little kitten in her pretty collar, all obedient.’

‘Oh, don’t bother. You almost communicate a thrill to me.’

Connie is thrilled, yes, thrilled – to feel the bonds snap. She couldn’t deny it. She refills Cliff’s glass, hands it across, and gets one for herself.

‘I want to get my video camera out. Like old times. Come on, Con, come on. Just this once. The Emin neon … panning across to you …’ – he mimes a camera close on her cunt – ‘you’re on my bed … waiting, wide, knowing not what … yes … your new magnificence.’

Cliff clutches his wife’s thigh, her waist, and inhales deep. As if he is breathing in life itself.

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm

Emma is driving across to London to pick up Connie. She loves a long drive. They will stay the night, leave at the crack of dawn, meander up the motorway, stop at friends near York. Excellent, all of it. For Connie has a plan.

‘I’ll put you up in a hotel, Emma, the Dorchester, Claridge’s, whatever you want. You just have to give me one night to myself. Pick me up from home say, 3.30, drop me around the corner, have a quick cuppa and then head off to wherever, to wallow in your lovely luxury. Then come back for me the next morning. Nine a.m., on the dot.’

‘Why? What’s going on? Is there bonking involved? Have you got a fella?
Nee
sie.’

‘Yes. Yes yes!’

Shocked silence, down the line, then, ‘Well, I can’t say you don’t need it. Just be careful, all right.’

‘Thank you, Em, thank you.’

They will get their sleep. Staying in the Portobello Hotel, Connie’s always wanted to try it. It was always too small, crammed, fusty for Cliff; not grand enough. It’s where Kate Moss and Johnny Depp had their champagne bath; she’s always wondered what it is like. It will be perfect. Connie gets a shudder in her belly just thinking of it. They will come at separate times, yes, no one has to know. She wants Emma to meet Mel, too, it is all part of the plan. To sever ties with Cliff’s life, to veer her man into her family’s path.

He’s reluctant.

‘You have to. You must.’ As petulant as a child. ‘And I will have to dress you. Scrub you up.’

‘
What?
’

‘I’ll take you to Paul Smith, get you a suit.’ Connie purrs at the thought. ‘It’s just down the road. Twenty minutes of your time!’

Mel backs back.

‘You come in by yourself. Just be there, mister. One p.m. On the dot. Choose, then I’ll slip in at the end and pay for it. I’ll be there looking for socks for Cliff, no one will know. It’s ingenious. Yes, yes! Because after Emma you’ll have to meet my parents, my father, and you can’t be looking like this. Maybe for her, but not for them. God, no. They wouldn’t cope.’

Connie’s like a force of nature now, standing there, blazing with it. She has purpose, suddenly, layers are peeling from her, layers and layers from a long-silted life. Remembering a dynamism, an energy, a fierce will from young womanhood she thought long lost. Scurried over by life, but now it’s back.

Mel cannot resist.

To love makes one solitary, she thought

Two sisters, side by side on the sunken, red velvet couch of the Portobello Hotel’s sitting room overlooking its garden. Silverware in readiness on the coffee table, fine bone china in front of them. French doors open, revealing a cram of luxuriant green beyond a pale gravelled path.

The sisters wait in brittleness. They are the only ones in the room at four o’clock. Connie will not reveal much of her Mel to Emma despite persistent questioning. She wants her sister to meet him clean of all perception. Emma, a successful GP, has always conveyed the impression she’s slightly irritated by her younger, prettier, more vivid sibling, all Connie’s life she has felt this. She has told Emma Mel’s name and that he’s a gardener but not much else.

‘So, you’d really like to be plain old Mrs Mel Jones instead of Mrs Clifford Carven the Third, would you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Think carefully about this, Neesie. Very carefully. No more fresh flowers and eyebrow threadings. No more weekly manis, reflexology, waxing. Opera opening nights, gone, Babington weekends, suppers at the Wolseley. All vanished. No more holidays in the Seychelles and the south of France, private planes and super-yachts. You’ll have to dye your hair at home, by yourself. No, hang on, you won’t have time because you’ll be working so blooming hard; you’ll have grey soon enough on your temples just like me – look. And you’ll have to learn to cook. No, sis, an oven is not for storage and gourmet does not mean scrambled eggs. You’ll have to scrub the toilets. Take out the rubbish. You’ll be worn down, that’s what life with him will do to you. Wear you completely down until you’re all lined and saggy from it. It’ll all be on your face. And then, of course, you’ll come running to Daddy, darling Daddy, for help.’

‘I will not. You have no idea, Em, of any of this.’

‘Why on earth do you want to do it? Keep this Mel person as your fuck buddy, by all means, Cliff would probably be happy with that. But don’t take it any further, for all our sakes, please, don’t.’

‘But I feel alive, Em, like I’m in the middle of something so exciting and fresh and energizing and glorious – creation, a new world – like everything is so wondrous and clean. Yes, clean. Spare, ready. For the first time in my adult life.’

‘Oh, stop your babbling. You’re in love. It will pass. Then reality will sink in and you’ll both be stuffed. You’ll get over him quickly enough. You both will.’

At that point Mel walks in. Transformed in his new attire. Lean, innately graceful, as if he has been wearing these kinds of clothes all his life. Connie realizes with a little smile that he could go anywhere, like this, that women would always look. He’s inherently arresting and doesn’t know it. A bonus. And far more naturally elegant than Cliff ever was.

But he’s nervous. Brusque with her sister, in his greetings and small talk, not allowing any of his beguiling looseness, softness. Inherently wary of what she will make of him, his motivations, his greed for whatever she’s got. He speaks rougher in Emma’s presence, more street, almost as a challenge to her to see how she’ll take it.

He pours the tea then sits back and watches the two women. So physically alike yet so different. The older one like a hessian sack with bits of straw hanging out; she’s been unhappily married for several decades, Mel knows that and can see it in her face; it’s all settling into sourness, especially the downward curve of her lips. He cannot imagine his sunny Connie ever, ever becoming that. No wonder she’s irritated by her sister; Connie has a lightness she never has, it’s obvious. He watches the two of them with the power of silence and containment and distance, as he always does in company, that Connie felt so attracted to from the first sight. To be so unneedy of anyone else; Emma senses it too.

‘Is this all worth the risk?’ she suddenly asks, abrupt. The headmistress who’s had enough.

‘What risk?’ Mel responds calmly, nonchalantly. Ready for the gladiatorial combat and knowing where he’s placed.

‘My sister stands to lose a lot here.’

‘Perhaps she stands to gain a lot, too. She comes to me for a bit of warmth and I give it to her.’ A dirty smile, a shrug. ‘I think she needs it. So what’s it to you? She’s a grown woman, what say do you have in her life? She’s strong. Tough. She can make up her own mind.’

Emma sighs, infuriated, and turns to her sister. ‘You can’t go making a mess for us all to clean up, Connie.’

‘Haven’t you perhaps made a bit of a mess of your own life?’ Mel challenges. ‘I hear you’re staying together for the sake of the kids, that it’s a poisoned house. So why deny your sister the right to happiness and freedom here? If you can’t have it yourself. Is that fair? What’s the subtext of this?’

‘It is fair, because the so-called “happiness and freedom’’ ’ – Emma puts up her fingers, signalling inverted commas – ‘you talk about so lovingly is with you. And what can you offer her, I wonder? Really? After all that she’s got. She’s had. Almost her entire adult life.’

‘What can I offer her?’ Mel’s got his cheeky face on, Connie can guess something of what’s coming next and Emma will not like it. ‘Great sex’ – Mel grins at the thought – ‘yep. But hey, don’t ask me. Ask her yourself what I can offer her. Look at her. She’s changed. Her whole body, her face, her entire demeanour. It’s all there.’ Mel is throwing down the gauntlet to Emma with a kind of grimy sensuality Connie’s never seen before; it’s thrilling and mortifying all at once. She throws up her arms as if she gives up entirely at this point. Mel winks at her; the two naughty schoolkids at the back of the class.

Emma stands brusquely. ‘I can find my own way out.’

Turns to them both, livid.

‘All I want to say is, I doubt whether either of you will find that it’s been worth it in the long run. In the cold hard light of day, when everything else is gone from your lives. You, Mr Jones, your job – in a climate where it’s extremely difficult to find work. And you, Connie, well, everything. Every single thing that you’ve got. Husband, house, clothes, respectability, friends, social life, shops. You have a very comfortable life. Very, very comfortable. Everyone thinks so. And you’ve grown extremely used to it. Plus your husband is a cripple who needs you. Have you thought of how this looks? You just need to wake up.’

Emma brisks out.

‘Nine a.m., on the dot. We have a long drive ahead of us.’

Without looking back.