The 2084 Precept (24 page)

CARDS. The game took about twenty minutes
and she won it. Not just because it was a game I didn't know, but
because my neurons were reaching their limits, vast quantities of
messages being shipped in machine-gun mode to my groin area—a
polite way to put it, I am sure you agree—and an equal number of
other messages being transmitted to my brain's internal control
department, and the few remaining left-over thoughts being devoted
to selecting a card each time it became necessary to do so. A
looming computer crash.

"Another game?" she asked and my lottery
chances, in yet another fell swoop, fell definitively down to
around 0.24%, give or take a point or two. She obviously did not
intend for anything to happen, absolutely nothing, she was a nice
girl. And I had to respect that, I had to admire it. A fine girl, a
great girl, a fantastic girl. And a nice girl, so nice that she had
caused one of life's huge waves to come along and swamp me and wash
my raft away in the direction of a barren and rocky coast..

She won the second game as well.

Well, said my neurons, in about twenty
minutes you are going to have to get out of this bed and go to the
cinema. And no way was I going to spend that time playing yet
another game of cards. So what your itinerate gambler does, he puts
his remaining roulette coin on a single number and he kisses it
goodbye in advance and he starts thinking about where he can go for
a much needed single malt and a cigarette, the latter probably in
the plural.

I said, "Céline, I am just going to snooze
for ten minutes if you don't mind, and then we can go out, O.K.?"
And I lay down and turned my face to the wall again.

Nothing happened. A minute or two went by.
And then she said, "I think I'll snooze for a while too." And she
lay down, fully clothed, on top of the bed. Thereby causing my raft
to be swept onto the rocky crags and smashed to pieces.

"Would you mind if we had the light out for
ten minutes?" I asked. The jittery and despairing poker player's
impossible last hope for the jack of clubs, and only the jack of
clubs, to arrive on the last turn and create his virtually
impossible royal flush.

She got up and switched the light off. And
then nothing happened again. Nothing happened at all for at least a
quarter of an hour, no word was spoken, the sounds of silence.

And then I won the lottery. And the roulette
number came up as well. And the jack of clubs showed. And a small
dinghy came floating by for me to grab hold of.

"
J'ai envie de toi,"
came her voice
out of the darkness. I want you.

I turned around and I held her and I kissed
her. I stripped off her clothes and threw them on the floor and I
kissed her again, I kissed her lots of times. And then I started
kissing her more slowly, on the mouth and then the neck, and then
the shoulders, and then her breasts. I licked her ears, I freed up
the ponytail and smothered myself in her hair, her soft, silky
hair. I kissed her stomach, I kissed her legs, I kissed the insides
of her thighs, everything soft and fine and silky and moist.

I stroked her and touched her more and more
and she began shuddering, writhing, moaning and then she suddenly
screamed '
Now, for god's sake now, oh now oh now, please'.
And it happened, a sweet explosion, much longer for her than for me
and after that we played and we stroked and we got to know each
other and we got to know what we liked and it went on for hours, it
went on for years, and it happened twice again.

And then we were quiet. She lay flat on top
of me and we just looked at each other, we inspected each other,
and we wondered how something could be as good as this and what we
had done to deserve it. We stayed like that for a long time and
then I couldn't stay still anymore and I started to stroke her
back, gently, delicately, and my hand moved down onto her buttocks,
and then in between her buttocks, into her buttocks, everything
tender and moist, incredible moistness everywhere, and then things
became less gentle, less delicate, and we couldn't stop ourselves
again.

And then she suddenly she sat up. This
magical girl sat up on her knees, straddling me, her hair just
touching my shoulders, peering shortsightedly at me without her
glasses, her throat and her breasts gleaming with sweat, and the
perfume of our lovemaking enveloping her, and me, and the bed
sheets, and the whole world.

She had an impish smile on her face.

"Cinema time, Peter, come on, you have to
get up."

"What time is it?" I groaned.

"It's half past eleven, not bedtime
yet."

"Half past eleven? But the only movies
you'll be able to find at this hour will be pornographic ones."

"I don't need pornographic movies now that
I've got you," she said. "Come on, let's go and find something to
eat. Or if everywhere is closed, let's find a bar, it's Saturday
night, we can have a drink to celebrate."

"Celebrate?"

"Yes, celebrate finding each other." She
smiled. "On a small autobahn feeder road somewhere in Germany."

"O.K., but no shower. I want to smell you
all the time."

"Naughty, naughty boy, you're not a dog.
Anyway, I've got some of you in my hair. I
have
to shower.
Come on."

We both got into the shower together, a tiny
space, and we had to stand right up against each other, and we
stroked each other all over and we soaped each other all over, and
it took a long time and in the end there wasn't a square centimeter
of either of us which wasn't as clean as a freshly bathed baby.

There was no-one at reception as we left the
hotel. Not surprising in this kind of hotel, at this time of night,
just gone midnight. Probably asleep in the office at the back,
customers please use the bell on the counter.

There was a bigger street at the end of ours
and we walked in that direction. I lit up a cigarette. We held
hands as we walked. Holding hands can produce powerful emotions, as
both Lennon and McCartney knew when writing the lyrics for that
song, not that I am a particular fan of Beatles music. Nor, come to
that, was Lennon, as we know. We didn't talk, we didn't need to. I
had a funny feeling inside of me. I had the feeling that I had
found something unbelievably precious, something incredibly
valuable. Possibly, at least. And I was very scared in case
something might happen to cause me to lose it. I was scared that I
might not be a good enough person for her. I was scared it might
turn out that she didn't like cynical types.

We turned the corner. There were a few
lights here and there down the road and we walked towards them. The
first was a dry-cleaning store closed down for the night. A few
doors along there was a restaurant, its sign shining brightly, but
it was empty and also closed for the night. And about fifty meters
further on there was a wine bar,
Chez Maurice
the sign said,
and the wine bar was open. Until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays
the sign said.

It was very dark inside, there were candles
on the tables, and it was quite full. But there were a couple of
tables free at the back. The bar served finger food. We ordered
some chicken wings and some bread and cheese and a large
pichet
of red. We didn't say anything until the food
arrived, we just held hands across the table and looked at each
other. Like a couple of teenagers. The music was soft, low volume,
romantic ballads. An oldie,
Forever Young
, was playing. He
knew about atmosphere, the owner of this place, whoever he was.

Céline had picked a short blue skirt and a
white woolly sweater out of her rucksack, slightly rumpled, but she
looked like only a French woman can look. It doesn't matter what
their clothes have cost, €5,000 or €10, they look…well, feminine.
And my Céline was feminine, magically so, the ponytail was back,
the chipped tooth was there, she was occasionally pushing up her
glasses and I was…happy. Incredibly, incredibly, happy. I almost
wanted to cry because of it, who says cynics can't have
feelings.

I think London is going to have to wait for
a few days, or maybe for a few years. I am going to Rouen.

I started off with a smile. "So what will
you be doing with your week off in Rouen, Céline, apart from
preparing some school work?"

She looked straight at me. She wasn't
smiling. She looked sad. She paused only briefly and then she
dropped her nuclear bomb. Thermo-nuclear.

"I will be seeing my fiancé," she said.

A nuclear bomb causes your jaw to drop, your
eyes to protrude, your vocal cords to produce barely audible
guttural resonances, and your heart to fall. My heart did fall, it
sank right down through my body and plummeted down to my feet and
tried to get out through my shoes. I am not joking. If a heart can
jump, it can fall. And my neurons? My neurons had become
inoperative, disarray does not describe it.

It took me a while to think of something to
say.

And all I could come up with was, "Your
fiancé?"

An old-fashioned word, there aren't too many
fiancés around these days, and the same thing for fiancées. There
are more bastard children than there are fiancés these days,
bastards have become a perfectly acceptable element of modern
society in recent times. No doubt the pope has fits and has
significantly increased his praying time, and his predecessors turn
over in their graves and smash their harp strings or whatever. To
no avail, of course.

"Yes," she said, "I have a fiancé."

"But why…why did you…you didn't have to
sleep with me, I would have understood. You
shouldn't
have
slept with me, Céline."

"Yes I should. I am in love with you."

"But…"

"But nothing, Peter. I am going to Rouen, I
am going to see my fiancé, I am going to tell him that I like him a
lot but that I am not in love with him, I am in love with someone
else, and then I am coming to London to be with you until I have to
go back to work again."

So there had never been a nuclear bomb. My
heart removed itself from my shoes. My senses returned, I could
hear the wine bar music again, another oldie was playing,
Unchained Melody
, the world was in order, everything was
back to being magical, my neurons realized there was no longer any
danger of a computer crash.

She smiled, she pushed her glasses up, she
leaned over the table towards me and she took hold of my hand and
held it tightly.

"We are going back to the hotel now, Peter.
Being in love with you increases my need for pornography. Of the
nice kind, you understand."

I smiled back at her. But I had a problem. I
am not the kind of guy to be the cause of a breakup. A marriage or
an intended marriage, it's the same thing. Not me, I am not made
that way. I have a guilty conscience, a huge bloody guilty
conscience. And although I would have signed on a bible with my own
blood that Céline and I had a good chance of staying together, I
knew, back in the dark recesses, that this might not be so.
Impossible
to know after just a few hours. What might seem
permanent in the beginning can turn out to be
not
permanent,
as we well know. People can change, people can turn out not to be
who you thought they were. Especially when you hardly know each
other. Bibles and signatures in blood notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, I would have signed, I wanted
to keep her. But not like this. My throat was dry, I drank some
wine, I needed to spend some time explaining my thoughts. "Céline,"
I said, "I don't think I should go back to the hotel with you. I
don't think you can know if you are in love with me. You may think
so. And I might perhaps be in love with you too, totally,
incredibly in love with you. But I don’t know. I
can’t
know.
We haven't known each other for a single day yet. We just suppose
and hope it might turn out to be the way we feel. The way we
think
we feel. We should wait. You have a fiancé and until
this morning you thought you were in love with him. I think you
should go back and find out what your feelings about him are. I
don't think we should think anything else, anything at all, until
you have done that. It hurts me to be saying this, you have to know
that, but I think I am going to get in my car, right now, and I am
going to drive up to Calais and over to London, and you are going
to go to Rouen tomorrow morning, and I am going to wait to hear
from you. I think it's for the best."

She thought about this. She looked very sad
and disconsolate. She bit her lip, she sipped her wine, she thought
some more. And then suddenly her look became a happy one, a
contented one, a decision taken.

"I'll be in London in two or three days'
time," she said. "You are right. This is what I should do first.
Perhaps I made it sound easy, but it won't be. I like him a lot and
it will be very painful for me to tell him we're finished. But I've
met you, Peter, and I know I'm not in love with him. Love is
something very different, it takes hold of you, it takes hold of
your entire body and it takes hold of your entire mind and it takes
hold of all of your feelings, and nothing else is important,
absolutely nothing, nothing else matters. And I have never felt
that way with him. I am in love with
you
Peter. Intensely. I
know it can last. And if it doesn't, well, I will have no regrets.
I will at least have been with you for a while, I will have known
you for a while, I will have had you in my life for a while, and
that is something I want, something I need, something I have to
have. I will miss you every minute and every day, until I see you
again. I will miss you terribly."

Her eyes were glistening. Some tears had
started to trickle down her cheeks, but she was smiling again and
she was happy again and she squeezed my hand and she stroked
it.