The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry [11]
“Paul Christopher,” Molly said. “That much is true. But now I find he has deceived me with a bird named Shirley. Paul, those poems are so good. I’m bloody jealous. Why don’t you write like that now, instead of doing journalism?”
“I’ve lost the touch.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it didn’t matter.”
“It matters. What else haven’t you told me?”
“Quite a lot, Molly.”
“I’ve often thought so. Paul, I wish you’d talk.”
“I talk all the time. We agree that Red China should be in the United Nations. I ask you about Australia and your girlhood in the outback. I explore your reasons for hating kangaroos. I praise your body.”
Molly kissed him and raised his hand to her breast. “Yes, all that, but you never go deep. I dream about you, I see you in your past, I see you in Kuala Lumpur and in the Congo when you’re away. But you never speak—you’re making me invent you, as you invented that girl.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What is the worst wound you have ever suffered?”
“Ah, Molly—I’m bulletproof.”
“You’re covered with scars. Please tell me, Paul. I’ll not ask you another question, ever.”
Christopher sat up in bed, moving his body away from Molly’s, and pulled the sheet over both of them. “All right,” he said. “Cathy could not bear to be alone. Her life, our marriage, took place in bed. She was a hungry lover, not graceful as you are. She needed sex, she’d scream and wail. Once we were thrown out of a hotel in Spain—they thought we were using whips. I knew she slept with men when I was away. I had no rule about it—it was her body, she could use it as she wished. She thought that showed a lack of love. She’d never believe I couldn’t feel sexual jealousy.”
“I believe it,” Molly said.
Cathy had not been content to let their marriage die. She set out to kill it. Christopher realized soon after he met her that he had never been so aroused by a female; his desire for her showed him a part of his nature he had not known to exist; he was seized by a biological force that had nothing to do with the mind, and he was driven to have her as, he supposed, a father would be seized by the instinct to kill the man who attacked his child. Cathy was a lovely girl with elongated gray eyes like a cat’s, perfect teeth, a straight nose, a lithe, frank body. She had been sent to college, and then to Europe to study languages and art, but she did nothing. She had superstitions, but no ideas; she had learned to play the piano and talk and wear clothes. She was beautiful and wanted to be nothing else. “What do you want?” Christopher asked her as they walked along a beach in Spain. “Not what other girls want—I’m not domestic. No children, no career. I want, Paul, a perfect union with a man.”
Cathy believed that she was different from all other human beings. Christopher was the first man in whom she had confided; she thought he was more like her in mind and soul than anyone else could be. When at last they went to bed, she was rapturous. But her passion was all she had. She had no skill as a lover and could not learn.
After a time she sensed that this was the trouble. Cathy wanted to satisfy Christopher. He wanted to reassure her. They made love constantly, in bed, in the car. She would meet him at the airport naked under a raincoat, and remove the coat as they drove home, pulling the wheel so that he would turn into the ruins at Ostia Antica, where they would lie behind the broken stones of an old wall, shuddering on the cold earth in a rainfall. Because she was an American and his wife, he told her about his work—the nature of his profession, not its details. She thought that he kept more from her than official secrets—that he could not forget some other woman whose name he wouldn’t reveal. She begged him to write about her. “You won’t give me what you are,” she said. “That’s all I want.”
Christopher loved to look at her. He bought her jewels and clothes and read to her. After a time, they lived in public as much as possible. They went to bullfights in Madrid, to the theater in London, they had restaurants they always went to and