Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (81 page)

Shopping is Connie’s drug. She has to control its dosage and then the urge overtakes her and if she sees something she must have, but it is not in her size, she will rise magnificent and track it down with the thoroughness of a detective on the scent. The sweetness of a purchase, the vast sweetness; within the tumult of loveliness that is Notting Hill, Marylebone, Bond Street, Westfield Shepherd’s Bush. She’ll do High Street as much as high end, she’ll do anything. Her walk-in wardrobe brims, she forgets what she has and often ends up wearing the same favoured thing, day after day. No matter. Her appetite has her wolfishly prowling not just shops for fresh stock but websites. Interrupted by Cliff e-mailing obscene photos of women being penetrated by men with enormous cocks, often black, begging her teasingly for ‘play’, informing her it’s ‘what she really wants’, reeling her in. She looks, still looks, shuts her eyes on it.

Shopping, for Connie, is a deeply alone pursuit. She could not bear for anyone else to witness her greed, her thrill, her sharkish intent. Spying something she likes, she’ll often linger slow by something else, as if to gather herself, calm her heartbeat, for the thrill of the kill. Alone she will secrete the bags home, alone tumble the purchases upon her bed, alone dress up for another viewing then disperse into the cupboards and drawers, forget …

She always looks effortless. It takes hours to perfect.

Mel would be revolted, by all of it.

To love makes one solitary

Connie has not been into the garden for days and days and then with a rush she is there, in an afternoon of roaring light and air that is thinning with a coming summer; she can no longer hold herself back. She hears the catch of his pale breath as she comes upon him. Under her thin coat of red dots she is naked but for silken black panties, a wisp of them.

‘It’s too early …’ – he backs back – ‘people are about.’

‘I don’t care.’ She is flinging aside his shovel and hauling him into the shed, the neck of his T-shirt in her hungry fist. ‘I do. not. care. All right?’

‘All right.’ Laughing, giving in.

He is pleased to see her, so pleased, it is a deepening; this lively little sprig of jasmine is vining his life; taking over his calm, his thoughts, his retreat into solitude, his flinty remoteness. Quick, his hands break the band of her thong and push it aside, quick, his fingers slip into both holes, bringing Connie to pleasure with a sure touch, oiling her up until she collapses in on herself, again, and again, and again, and then he encircles her trembling and just holds, and holds, his hand protective over her secret places. A still quiet. No talk, of course, never that straight afterwards, he knows she does not want the crash of that, is learning her fast.

Her flinching quietens. ‘Thank you for coming back,’ he whispers finally, hoarse.

Connie just lies there, encircled by him, and the tears slowly run from her eyes. Crying, snotting, all phlegm and fluid; for she is loosened, completely, released. Mel does nothing, just wraps her in the encompassing peace of his body. All is still, humble, quiet. It is the stillness of a man found, as he holds her, he knows it. No matter how much he tries to resist.

The passion for him moves in Connie’s belly once again, she resists it as far as she can, must get back, Cliff is at home this evening, she can’t. But quick. She stirs him and he responds, his touch so much more competitive and creative than Cliff’s has ever been. There is no complacency, no taking for granted, he wants his stroking, licking, caressing, cherishing to be remembered. It’s as if he wants to wipe all her husband’s ways like a whiteboard freshened; to stamp her skin with the permanence of his own stroke. He flips her, wants something else. Her buttocks spread wide, a cool breath, a nudging, a trembling, a reticence, into her arse, gently, probing, so careful not to hurt.

‘Ow,’ she gasps, and he withdraws: ‘Another time.’

‘No, no, now.’

He is on her, moving – surely the thrusting of pale buttocks is a little ridiculous, Connie is thinking, how silly they must look, to anyone who came upon them – then a finger is in her vagina, the skin between the two passages is so thin, paper thin and so sensitively he works until her body takes over, surrenders to the exquisiteness and she comes; they both do, together. And fall back and laugh.

‘I’ve never done that before. Come, at the same time with someone. Ever.’

‘Most people haven’t.’

‘You know, more than a few women I know have never come.’

‘Really? Even now … in this day and age.’ Mel shakes his head.

‘Oh yes. Or they haven’t come until their late thirties or forties at least. Not that you men ever know these things.’

‘You came. I can tell. I always can.’

‘Yes.’ And for a while there she thought she’d never be able to again, in the thick of Cliff, without all the help. She smiles. There is only one word for how Connie feels now, in the sanctity of this quiet.

Anchored.

I want someone to sit beside after the day’s pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy – to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits

It is late, they cannot part; Cliff will be home now, they must. Connie feels the terrible weight of Mel and tries to extract herself, can’t; he is stroking her, cupping her between her legs, playful; the hair has almost grown back. ‘Ah my lovely, lovely – healthy – cunt of a thing.’

‘What!’ She bats him away, laughing. ‘That
word.
Excuse me. It’s appalling. I can’t believe you just said it. The only men who ever say it are men who don’t like women very much.’

‘Cunt cunt cunt,’ he is teasing, relishing it on the tongue. ‘I love saying it. All of it.’

‘Excuse me,’ Connie admonishes. ‘A woman is trained to distrust the man – and the circumstance – whenever we hear it. To castigate and protest.’

‘Cunt cunt, lovely cunt.’ Mel buries his head into her. ‘For me it’s entirely something else. It’s you, it’s this, it’s sex, it’s inside you, outside you, it’s the whole damned loveliness, the whole blinking lot. Let me … change … the word for you.’ He stops, thinks. ‘It’s a precious thing. Something to revel in, cherish. It’s not just fucking. Argh, I can do that with anyone and bollocks to it. But this,
this
, wakes me up. Hauls me into …’ He struggles for the word.

‘What?’

‘The world again. And I’d given up on it, until a little bird came into my life.’ Mel looks at Connie – ‘Yes’ – with his warm, kind, speaking eyes. She kisses him softly, rightly between them, in chuff. ‘It really has,’ he adds.

‘I know,’ she whispers, kissing his thick black lashes that still have something of the little boy in them, first one side, now the other, in rhythmic gentleness. ‘Do you care for me? Do you? Really?’

‘What do you think? I try my hardest to resist you – everything you represent – but can’t. Just … can’t.’

Mel’s hands curve firm over Connie’s body not with desire now but a cherishing, an ownership. A pleasure that all is well, and all is his,
his
, as if he can scarcely believe it. He kisses her with the lifetime’s tenderness in it and Connie marvels at that – when Cliff had not a scrap.

‘Thank you,’ Connie whispers, ‘thank you.’

The day is winding down and she runs home through air that is vibrant with stillness. What has happened, what has transpired on this day feels like an anointing, a hauling into womanhood, finally, a strong, rooted maturing into something else – or at least a journey’s departing. Connie runs home to the hull of her marriage, high and dry on its sand. The kiss with all the world’s tenderness singing through her still, giddying her up. The touch of his lips, like voice, something she will never forget. She just knows it.

With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved … and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past

Connie’s heart like an oven, a furnace, just opened. The heat of it, the roar. She cannot slam it shut. Who can tell? Everyone? The blare of it.

She rushes in to the kitchen. Marichka is spoon-feeding Cliff ice cream, the last of it and Connie has no idea why but he is lapping it up. Some game they are playing. She comes upon them like an intrusion. It is a scene of collusion, tinged in early evening light, a sixteenth-century Dutch painting of domesticity, caring, quiet. Marichka looks up at her like, so, whatever works. Connie nods, yes, whatever works, keep on going, girl, keep at it. But there is something new in her stance, a freshness, a wildness, Marishka can sense it in the other woman. She slips away. Connie turns and watches her depart, wondering for a moment if she is listening by the door.

Steps forward. Takes a deep breath.

‘Clifford’ – she only calls her husband this when something serious is to be said – ‘would you like me to have a baby one day?’

From her husband: furtive apprehension. Trying to second-guess what comes next. To control, to win, command, as he always wins.

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he says carefully. A pause. ‘As long as it made no difference between us.’

Connie cocks her head.

‘Yes. I could be quite willing, I suppose, as long as it doesn’t affect our marriage.’ He’s like a cornered dog, thinking aloud, trying to see ahead, work it through. ‘Affect what we have. Con.’ The voice lowering, warning. ‘Nothing must come between us. Why are you saying this? What’s going on?’ He is suddenly cold, brittle, as still as a hoary January frost. Connie recognizes it. It is a threat. Cliff crushes people, of course; that’s how he’s always succeeded, in his business and his life. Rivals, colleagues, friends, clients.

Leaving him – magnificent rupture – would humiliate him, of course, the anger would be encompassing and immense. Connie is inside the black oil of his mind now, inside his desire to infiltrate, dominate, swamp. She is all Cliff has. All he wants is for her to stay with him, in this, the husk of his life; be with him for ever, propping him up, his sexual regenerator and adornment. He needs the public show of that, the public theatre of his power over this aspect of his life. This man before her is almost an emotional cripple – and she does not know how she can extricate herself.

‘A child would seem just like my own, I guess. If it’s done right. Legally. Emotionally. People will ask. We’d keep things to ourselves, of course. I’d get everything watertight. Contracts and so forth.’ He’s talking it through, trying to make it work. Connie is listening, her heart breaking. He is willing to do this – something he categorically does not want – for their marriage. To keep up the pretence, to have her by his side, to preserve the past in aspic. He is taking over this too as he takes over everything and he doesn’t even realize it; his unbending way with control. No, it could never work. For her or a child, and Cliff doesn’t understand and most likely never would. Connie has wondered if he’d ever fall in love with Marichka – if the hired help could be her distraction, her saviour – but she’s a diversion, nothing more than that. She sees it now. He would never publicly be with her, he wouldn’t stoop. There’s no cachet in the hired help. As for Connie …