A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon [18]
He took her hand and held it, and she was disappointed. She’d found a soul mate and he was about to wreck it all with a clumsy pass. But he squeezed it and let go and said, “Come on. You’ll be late home,” and she wanted to take his hand back.
Later she was scared. Of saying yes. Of saying no. Of saying yes then realizing she should have said no. Of saying no then realizing she should have said yes. Of being naked in front of another man when her body sometimes made her feel like weeping.
So she told George. About meeting David in the shop and the coffee across the road. But not about the hands and the footbridge. She wanted him to be cross. She wanted him to make her life simple again. But he didn’t. She dropped David’s name into the conversation a couple more times and got no reaction. George’s lack of concern began to seem like encouragement.
David had had other affairs. She knew. Even before he said. The way he cupped his hand round the back of her neck that first time. She was relieved. She didn’t want to do this with someone sailing into uncharted waters, especially after Gloria’s horror story about finding that man from Derby parked outside her house one morning.
And Jean was right. He was very hairy indeed. Like a monkey, almost. Which made it better somehow. Because it showed that it wasn’t really about the sex. Though, during the last few months she had grown rather fond of that silky feel under her fingers when she stroked his back.
The bathroom door clicked open and she closed her eyes. David walked across the rug and slipped his arms around her. She could smell coal tar soap and clean skin. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
He said, “I seem to have found a beautiful woman in my bedroom.”
She laughed at the childishness of it. She was very far from being a beautiful woman. But it was good, pretending. Almost better than the real thing. Like being a kid again. Getting this close to another human being. Climbing trees and drinking bathwater. Knowing how everything felt and tasted.
He turned her round and kissed her.
He wanted to make her feel good. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had done that.
He closed the curtains and led her over to the bed and laid her down and kissed her again and pushed the dressing gown off her shoulders and she was melting into that dark behind her eyelids, the way butter melted in a hot pan, the way you melted back into sleep after waking up at night, just letting it take you.
She put her hands around his neck and felt the muscles under the skin and those tiny hairs where the barber had run the razor close. And his own hands were slowly moving down her body and she could see the two of them from the far side of the room, doing this thing you only ever saw beautiful people doing in films. And maybe she did believe it now, that she was beautiful, that they were both beautiful.
Her body felt as if it were swaying back and forth with the movement of his fingers, a fairground ride that was taking her higher and faster with every swing so that she was weightless at each end, so high she could see the pleasure gardens and the ferries in the bay and the green hills across the water.
He said, “God, I love you,” and she loved him back, for doing this, for understanding a part of her that she never knew existed. But she couldn’t say it. Not now. She couldn’t say anything. She just squeezed his shoulder, meaning, Keep going.
She put her hand around his penis and moved it back and forth and it no longer seemed strange, not even a part of his body, more a part of hers, the sensations flowing in one unbroken circle. And she could hear herself panting now, like a dog, but she didn’t care.
And she realized that it was going to happen and she heard herself saying, “Yes, yes, yes,” and even hearing the sound of her own voice didn’t break the spell. And it swept over her like surf sweeping over sand then falling back and sweeping up over the sand again and falling back.
Images went off in her head like little fireworks. The smell of