Authors: Nikki Gemmell
With My Body (33 page)
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m holding on to you, Mummy, so you can’t run away from the boysies.’
You bury your face into the warmth of his neck and smile and breathe deep. Your beautiful son, who makes you laugh so much. All of them.
It is enough.
His firm, soft, nine-year-old hand holding you still as you lie in the voluminous quiet. You’ve become extremely vulnerable to kindness, it’s the quality you now cherish the most. And it’s wondrous and moving to see your son transforming into a man.
A gorgeous man. Whose kindness astounds you; the generosity of it. He’s a much better person than you. He teaches you so much.
Open-eyed.
At last.
Having chosen, let her fulfil her lot
The urge to return to Australia for good has softened. This is your lot, your life, and you are still with it. Finally. As you have aged you have felt the desire to belong, somewhere, above all, and you belong
here
in this tight, scruffy, imperfect little unit—in this place.
You feel rested too. Pip is finally sleeping through the night and with that comes repairing, an old energy back that you’d completely forgotten about. The balm of solid nights’ sleeps. For Hugh too.
You can feel it, something revving.
By the time she has arrived at half of those three-score-years-and-ten she will generally have become her own mistress
Rushing through the door on a damp Saturday afternoon, laden with midlife-crisis shopping bags. Topshop, French Connection, Zara. You can hear all four of them singing the World Cup anthem around the kitchen table and you head straight into them: they’re doing fine. Homework done. Mouths wiped. Lunch consumed, albeit the detritus uncleared but so what?
Hugh eyes the shopping.
‘Well, at least you haven’t given up,’ he remarks drily and you laugh. ‘But where’s the one from Coco de Mer?’
‘What’s Cocal din-
ner
?’ Jack pipes up.
You pull out a bra, ta dah! Three little boys squirm and cover their eyes in horror. But your husband comes up to you and pushes into your space in silence like a horse at a fence nudging for grass. Strong, gentle, hopeful.
You kiss him back. Hold, and let the holding wash over you, as does he.
I hold the law of kindness, the alpha and omega of education
You love this man. The knowing washes like a golden balm under your skin, washes through your body as you hold in the kitchen amid a cacophony of chanty, squealy, shove-y boys. Your husband amongst it is in you like the glow of a candle. Quieting.
You know now you are ready to lead a more honest life. A life self-created—or you will disappear. That is your choice as your forties gather pace.
And you have clever fingertips.
Because you were taught, once.
‘I want to fuck you tonight,’ you whisper.
Hugh steps back in astonishment.
‘Boys, straight to bed after
X-Factor
!’ he announces. ‘You all need an early night. And footy tomorrow. It’s about time we all went.’
Boys groaning. Dad rubbing his hands. Mum smiling a smile she hasn’t used for a long time, years.
Because you need buoyancy not weight, the older you get. Fun. A loosening. Your clever fingertips trip up Hugh’s back, under his shirt, reaping goosebumps.
A giggle in your heart.
Let all these powers of vital renewal have free play
Can desire be so crusted over it is gone for good? Buried too deep to ever be aroused again?
You used to think you never wanted to sleep with anyone again; that kind of life was gone. You had your children, sex had served its purpose. You used to think you were broken, that it was too hard to ever be fixed—adults never get repaired they get worse, life chips away at them and they carry the damage throughout their adulthood; it hardens, calcifies, in fact.
But you feel freed. Miraculously.
After years of being the yes woman you have found a voice. And with that, comes confidence.
You’ve also noticed that you’ve put on a bit of weight recently—and it seems to have woken your husband up. Odd, that. Or not. As you relax, unclench.
That night you make love with Hugh for the first time in years. Rusty, like an old lock. You have to force yourself into a working, a remembering, but then it all comes back. And this time, crucially, it’s on your terms—not anyone else’s.
Telling your husband what you want. And what you don’t.
Night after night. Whispering, spilling your honesty, revelling in his astonishment. You want his tongue taut, there, right there,
keep going, no talk!
Lift my leg up. Higher. The clit! Now let me go on top.
You teach him, direct, grab his finger and place it exactly on the spot.
A woman he’s never seen in his life.
The pleasure in utmost precision.
All of it coming back.
His body is soft from his indoor life, not fat but lacking tone; you do not care. It’s not supreme fitness you want, it’s the touch. The tenderness. It’s always been everything. He never got it.
Until now.
A woman he never knew existed.
That you’d never dared show him.
Her greater independence in middle life
Now he’s coming into bed at 4 a.m. and gently making love—with sleepy, spidery tenderness—because he is finally listening to what you want. Now he is slowly prising you open with a whisper of a fingertip until you are shuddering, endlessly, turning to him then turning from him, pushing him away, alone in your loveliness. Then you want to sleep and he lets you; he wants it too.
You are parents after all: tomorrow, from 6 a.m., the great wallop of life.
It was never like this before. When you had babies to make. When it was so calculating, fraught, businesslike. All that pressure of coming, at the precise moment in the month, pumping the juice from him and then flipping your feet up to the ceiling and praying that gravity would do its work.
Just pleasure left.
The pursuit of it, an endless experiment. You know that now. It is fluid, dynamic, changing, even within a partnership of years, decades. It’s possible, if you both allow it. A revelation. You can see now that through the great span of a lifetime there are troughs and peaks, floods and droughts—the less you have the less you want—but then the extraordinary opposite.
It has fulfilled its appointed course
Mel and you avoid talk beyond banalities at the school gate. You could never do the lesbian things; cripes, the clash of the hormones, twice a month, and God help you if your periods were in sync. But every time you see her there is a smile of secrets, thanking her. For springing you back into life.
Like a steel trap suddenly burst open, you are released.
She knows it. She can see it. She wishes you well, it’s in her face.
Both parties grow out of friendship and cast it, like a snake his last year’s skin—this is a fact too mournfully common to be denied
Courage now, to face so much.
Life is leaving its imprint on your forehead and you can see the years stretching ahead of you—of school gates and speech days and GSCEs with your heart in your mouth and all the Susans, again and again, with their unthinking crowing confidence; or insecurity, perhaps, actually—all the Susans you will have to face throughout life, as a mother trapped in the glare of their headlights.
Or not.
Has that world cemented so firmly around you that it can never be cracked apart?
‘Sooz, I love you, but you really don’t have to give me a rundown of Basti’s achievements every time I see you. He’s precious. I get it. He’s a beautiful boy. But they’re
all
precious. My boy as much as yours. I just don’t feel the need to say it, darl. I have to tell you this—gently—alright? It’s doing my head in.’
Her astonishment.
The pulling away, from that point. The necessary pulling away.
Your relief.
Because actually, your boy’s alright. You know it now, no matter how much she needs to give you her little critique when you pick up Rexi from her doorstep. Your boy is growing up fine. Beautifully, in fact, in tandem with your own happiness firming, your settledness pushing through into all pockets of your lives. And it doesn’t matter anymore that she doesn’t see it, or does but can’t bring herself to declare it. It’s her problem. You’re strong enough in yourself, as is Rex.
You know now you only want to be surrounded by heart-lifters. Girlfriends who allow you to be yourself. Susan doesn’t. In fact, there’s a little catch of anxiety ahead of any coffee you have with her. Why on earth do you put yourself through it? You heard at a funeral once that a person’s life should be measured in deeds not years; and deeds Susan has done aplenty, you will happily praise her to the heavens, a good kind woman in many respects, yes—you just don’t need her entwined in your life anymore.
Not anymore. As the distilling gathers pace.
A lesson you are finally acting upon: some friendships will naturally run their course in life and there is no shame or guilt in that. They are right for a particular time and then they are not. Move on, cleanly, as the souring starts.
It’s good for you both.
Women are but rarely placed in circumstances where they have actively to assume the guardianship or rule of others
Taking control. Blindfolds, handcuffs, vibrators—sometimes two at once. All those things you had reserved for one man and one only but now you can articulate, you have a voice and are not afraid to use it. No blow jobs, and you are hugely apologetic about that—it’s just something you’ve never liked—but Hugh concurs to get everything else. For you it is empowered sex. The balance has shifted: it was always his way in the past.
You laugh at yourselves, the two of you; finish off giggling, side by side, on your backs. How ridiculous and silly and lovely it all is, how amazing that your bodies can still do this. It’s like your sex life, as a couple, has burst into colour after years of black and white. He knows now that you will no longer tolerate bad sex. If it is, you don’t want it; you’ll push him away, you’re too old for anything substandard. You’ve moved beyond youth hostels and Primark and pot noodles and sleeping mats—in middle age you’ll only stand for the best.
It has to work. Fabulously. For both of you.
In terms of sex, you have entered a dialogue. Finally. After so many years of marriage.
It has saved you both.
And at night, alone, before Hugh slips into bed with you, you take out your little Victorian book with all its notes, those little nuggets of memory that plummet you back to a time that is burnished.
By what worked. Then, and now.
Heroic sex.
Finally. What Tol was preparing you for. This moment, your entire adult life. You send him a smile, from across the waves, across the world; send a smile to Woondala in gratitude for an awakening, once.
In growing old, we are able to see the clearing away of knots in tangled destinies
Mel picks up her boy a tad late in the afternoons—on the days her ex or her mother isn’t doing it—sauntering always a little behind everyone else. So she doesn’t have to engage, perhaps, to become too enmeshed. She has her own life and it’s filled up; doesn’t need the clutter of the school gate. You can see the zest and serenity of divorced women like her, in control of their lives. You are learning from it.
You tell Hugh you will eat with the kids and leave his dinner on the stove from now on, for when he comes in late, to eat by himself; it’s killing you waiting up, having dinner at ten or beyond.
‘OK,’ he says, with something like relief.
Gosh, as easy as that.
‘It’ll keep you fresh,’ he adds, with a filthy grin.
You burst into a laugh. He’s right.
So, just like that, you won’t have to hear his loud chewing for five days of the week; one of the many irritations among all the irritations but it’s never enough for any type of action. He is a good man. Who delights in preparing his sons’ lunch boxes, shoos you off on Saturday shopping treats, insists you take girly nights off
for your sanity
and will even, now, do the boys’ nit bath
and clip his own head in solidarity—and practicality—because he likes hugging them so much and stray head lice won’t be stopping that. It says so much about him.
A
kind
man. To be cherished. Tol would have wanted it.
You cut your own hair and finally dye it, obscuring the grey sneaking in at your temples. Throw away the camel colours, the sand and the chalk, bolden yourself up. Fight the flint of the weather with exuberant colour, purples and greens and reds and pinks. A bit of dazzle on your eyes, a bit of sparkle on your cuffs. Who cares what people think—you are freeing yourself from that too. Seizing joy. Celebrating the wonder of everything around you, the crazy vivid glorious beauty of so much. Becoming that woman who revels in life; who seems like she has sex a lot, three times a day, whether she does or not.
It’s in the laugh.
We have not to construct human nature afresh, but to take it as we find it, and make the best of it
In the languidness, post-sex, of a lazy Saturday night Hugh is hearing all about Susan and rolling his eyes—
women
—a species he knows little of.
