Altar Ego (9 page)

‘Yeah? Well, It’s time we took the temperature of this relationship. With a
rectal
thermometer.’

The only sign that I’d stung him was the way the car bumped over the road-Braille of cat’s eyes. I went down a mental gear. ‘All you need to do, Jules, is take more exercise. Look at you.’ I patted the pot belly straining against the seat belt with tenderness. ‘You’re getting podgy, darling. You haven’t seen your testicles for over six months.’

‘Testicles! Huh! I don’t have any testicles! You took them on my wedding day. Need I jog your memory?’

‘It’s the only thing you
do
jog. When we met, you had buns of steel. Lately your buttocks have the consistency of, I dunno … lasagne. Vegetable lasagne. With too much milk.’

‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, Rebecca, but I’m a lawyer. I conquer the Great Indoors. The only thing I exercise is caution. Which is why I waited until
I
was forty to choose the woman I wanted to marry. But since you eschewed the band of gold …’

‘There you go. Eschewed. Did you have to say “eschewed” at the reception? Why can’t you just say “rejected”? Why can’t you just use a normal word now and again?’ The overhead fog lights had turned us both a toxic orange. ‘Why do you always have to show that you’re suffering from First-Degree Knowledge?’

‘So that’s why you resent me? Because my brains have gone to my head?’ he asked incredulously.

I groped under the seat for my cigarettes. ‘What I resent is the fact that you were at bloody Oxford for so long that you’ve got ivy growing up the back of your legs. All work and no play makes Julian a dull boy.’

‘But all play and no work will get Julian defending serious cases of unlawful parking in Bognor Regis. I work hard so that we can enjoy the finer things in life.’

‘Oh yes, like all night unpaid work-a-thons – you haven’t charged a client for months. Sex with socks still on ’cause you’re too tired to take them off …’

Flicking on the dome light and rummaging in my handbag, I thought about Julian’s mistress – his work. In a way I’d have preferred it to be another woman. Then I could simply carwash his Saab in hydrochloric acid, bathe in his fine wine collection, and pen the odd piece about ‘A Woman Scorned’. But what could I say about a man who lavished love on his law books? It was giving me subpoena-envy, it really was.

‘What about all the wonderful holidays I’ve taken
you
on?’ he retorted, once we were safely ejaculated into the motorway traffic. ‘Would you turn that light off?’

‘Yes. In the coup-ridden capitals of the Universe … I’m sick of you carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, Julian.’ I turned off the light and punched in the cigarette lighter. ‘Get a porter!’

‘You’re thirty-two, Becky.’ Julian snatched the cigarette from between my fingers and extinguished it. ‘You’ve had enough fun. It’s time you settled down and started a family.’

‘Huh,’ I sulked, ‘you actually have to have sex now and again to get children …’ I gnawed on a nail. ‘The last time we had any physical contact was when I got that fish bone stuck in my throat at the River Café and you gave me the Heimlich manoeuvre. You haven’t given me head for months!’

‘Honestly, Rebecca!’; The Saab tyres slurped angrily at roadside puddles. ‘Must you speak so crudely? It’s not as though you ever asked …’

‘What do you need? A written invitation? Jesus!’

‘Oh, well, while we’re at it, what else is bothering you sexually? Why not make a list!’

‘Well, okay.’

‘I was joking!’

‘Your approach to sex could be a little more, um, spontaneous. It’s the same approach you have to deleafing the gutters, a task you dutifully undertake, say, once every other week.’

‘The spontaneity has
not
gone out of … What about when we had sex in Vivian and Simon’s house? When we went over to feed the cat?’

‘Julian. You hung up your clothes first. You don’t talk enough in bed either.’

‘I’m a lawyer. If I talk I have to charge.’

‘There you go. Why do you have to relate everything back to work? You’ll soon have me plea bargaining for foreplay …’

‘Good idea. Just outline your sexual requirements on a yellow legal pad, will you, and I’ll take them under advisement.’

There was a beat while we watched the wipers cha-cha across the windshield, before we both spluttered into laughter. Julian was laughing so hard he had to pull over. When he calmed down, he laid his warm, dry hand on top of mine.

‘I love you so much, Becky. I love your chutzpah, your cheek. Your wit … Not to mention the best legs in London.’

The tidal wave of guilt I’d been damning engulfed me in one giant roar. I seized his hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Jules. I’m a vile, loathsome excrescence. I belong on the bottom of somebody’s shoe … I’ve been behaving like Betty Davis on crack. I can’t believe you can still love me after all the …’

‘I’d do anything for you, Beck, you know that … Well, anything which doesn’t involve sex-change operations in Thailand.’

I squeezed his hand. ‘Let’s go away. This weekend. And just fuck our brains out. Like we used to. And in between, we can talk everything through.’

Julian winced. ‘I can’t. Client dinner. Saturday night. Actually, I was hoping you’d come with me …’

I groaned loudly. ‘Oh no, not the Wife Thing.’

‘Please, Becky.’ He leant over. The kiss he gave me was sultry and succulent. ‘There,’ he said, eventually, resurfacing for air. ‘Can a vibrator do
that
?’ How about some “heavy petting”?’ he suggested wryly.

‘I think I’ve finally solved one of life’s great mysteries, namely, why men prefer to have sex in cars,’ I said, shedding clothes. ‘Because objects in the rear-view mirror always appear larger than they actually are, right?’

Julian laughed, unbuckling. The Man Who Took Women’s Breath Away, I sighed inwardly, would not
ever
need to make love in a car.

When the car phone rang seconds later, we both jumped. My mother’s t-glottalling assaulted our eardrums over the loudspeaker. I wouldn’t have picked up except that it was the first time we’d spoken since my non-wedding day.

‘So, Anouska got ’erself a bloke then, did she? Why can’t I ’ave a daugh’er like ’er … Instead of a thirty-two-year-old spinster.’

‘Oh Mum. Why do I have to be thirty-two years
old
? Why can’t I be thirty-two years
young
?’

‘Ya ’aven’t gorn and met someone else, ’ave ya?’

I dashed thoughts of my one-night stand from my mind. Well, one-lick stand, really. I also made a vow never ever to breathe a word about Zack to anybody. I didn’t understand what I’d done myself, so how could I expect anyone else to? Having so recently jilted Julian at the altar – an act that put me on a par with, I dunno, a puppy vivisectionist – a full carnal confession was not exactly going to win me any points, not even with my girlfriends. Besides if there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s the definition of a secret: something your girlfriends tell everyone not to tell anyone.

‘Can’t ’old me ’ead up in public.’ This from a woman whose only claim to fame is winning every wet T-shirt competition for Seniors the length and breadth of the Costa del Sol. ‘I’m tha(t) bi(tt)er abou(t) i(t).’ I cringed at the way she strangled her t’s. ‘I mean, what exac(t)ly do ya fink you’re up to?’

I looked at Julian’s rapidly detumescing appendage. ‘Later,’ he promised, re-zipping.

I sighed. ‘Not much, Mum.’

Just a lick and a promise.

8
Yodelling In The Canyon Of Love

‘
I HAD A
fling,’ I gushed, flumphing into Anouska’s designer sofa. So much for my little secret.

‘You what?’ Kate’s molars cracked on a Japanese rice cracker.

We were at Anouska’s posh Chelsea Harbour apartment for the official present opening where, traditionally, girlfriends gather to hyperventilate over colanders and comedy oven gloves. We’d watched aghast, as an eleven-inch-high Francis of Assisi scratching a Royal Doulton dog’s nose emerged from its gift wrapping. Why is there such a complete collapse of good taste when it comes to wedding presents? Why is it that normal, sophisticated couples, collectors of Art Deco, subscribers to Interior Design magazines, suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to purchase crockery bullocks carting glow-in-the-dark
sleighs
or tartan egg-cups from Argos? (Argos is the place I took my friends to show them what I
didn’t
want for my wedding.)

‘When?’ said Anouska.

‘With whom?’ demanded Kate.

‘Where?’ they said in unison.

‘At your wedding. I don’t know his name. By the pool.’ I answered them in order.

‘What did he look like?’ Anouska pored over the wedding list.

‘He didn’t seem to know many people. Maybe he was a last-minute space-filler? He was tall, sexy, black …’

‘Black?’ Anouska exclaimed, offering pretzels from a ceramic donkey with a hollowed-out back. ‘So, is it true what they say? You know … about black men?’

‘What? That they have black skin?’

‘You know.
It
. Down
There. That
.’

Anouska was the sort of girl who, in the heat of passion, referred to her vagina as ‘There’. And the man’s penis as ‘It’, ‘That’ or ‘That thing’. ‘Touch me there with that thing’ was really the extent of her erotic verbal repertoire.

‘I can’t believe you asked such a stereotypically racist question. ‘I nibbled haughtily at a pretzel before gushing. ‘Yes. It’s abso
lut
ely true! His penis is so big it’s in a separate time zone to his body!’

Anouska squealed. ‘Balaclava or turtle neck?’ she added, boldly.

‘Stop. Stop this phallophilic conversation right now.’ Kate fumed. ‘Honestly, Rebecca! How could you have sex on a first encounter?’

‘It wasn’t a
first
date, Kate, it was a
last
one. It’s not like I’ll ever see him again, okay?’ I said, crossing one knee-high chunky-soled boot over the other.

‘I worry about you, I really do,’ Kate lectured me. ‘I mean, look at those rid
ic
ulous shoes. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you high heels dehumanize women. Only deer and cats walk on their toes. And that’s what you look like wearing them.’

‘Have you no redeeming vice, Kate?’ I asked wearily.

Anouska passed me salt and pepper shakers in the shape of cows with big, pink udders from which the desired condiments were dispensed. ‘How could you be unfaithful to Julian, Becky?’ She primly scissored her legs. ‘At least you’ve got a man who loves you.’

Unlike Anouska, I thought sadly. In a good marriage it takes about a month before you’re vertical for long enough to write the thank-you letters. Well, Anouska was writing hers
the day after the wedding
.

‘I wasn’t unfaithful!’ I waved the udder over my tomatoes and basil. ‘He only went down on me.’

Kate and Anouska swivelled simultaneously to face me. ‘What?’ they said in prurient tandem.

‘We didn’t have sex. He merely yodelled in my canyon of love.’

‘Rebecca, since when doesn’t that count as infidelity?’ Kate demanded.

‘Well, that’s what
men
always say. “It didn’t mean anything. It was only a blow job.” Ask Bill Clinton. For some men even ‘sticking it in a little way’ doesn’t count as being unfaithful.’

‘So,’ Anouska pried, curiosity overcoming her sense of propriety. ‘How was it?’

‘Now that’s a stupid question. What’s the worst cunnilingual experience
you’ve
ever had?’

‘Um … fabulous.’

‘Exactly. Which is just how I felt. It was a genital highball … clitoral Tabasco. I had orgasms like a string of firecrackers. I had …’

‘Okay. Okay.’ Kate waved me into silence. ‘Jeez, we get the picture …’

‘No you don’t.’ I retorted. ‘The only thing that ever goes down on you is your computer.’

‘Ha bloody ha … You really weren’t allowed to reciprocate?’ Kate sticky-beaked, dumbfounded. ‘You really just had to lie there and receive pleasure?’

I nodded. Both women looked at me, gobsmacked. ‘Why is it that people already in relationships are the only ones who fuck around?’ Kate complained. ‘We singles don’t have the energy. Too bloody exhausted doing the shopping, picking up the car, completing the DIY … God!’ Kate scraped her pitta bread across the bowl of tzatziki. ‘Now I remember him! The teenager. On the dance floor. I mean how old
is
he? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? That’s about two steps up from sperm. You need a shrink, Rebecca, you really do.’

Why did people keep telling me I needed psychiatric help? I’d dumped the love of my life at the altar, seduced a complete stranger, then confessed all to my girlfriends – having vowed not to. Hell, I didn’t need a shrink. I already
knew
I was nuts.

‘How could you dump Julian for a piece of jail-bait?’ Anouska insisted sanctimoniously.

‘Look, I didn’t dump Julian for this guy, okay? It was hips that pass in the night … A postscript for a memoir … except that it’s too clichéd to tell anyone – the black toy boy with the gi-normous cream-stick. I mean puh-lease. So let’s just forget about it. It’s not like I’ll ever see him again. Gee, I’ve forgotten him already.’

My two ‘besties’ looked at me with a mixture of distrust and disapproval. But, hey, I reassured myself, tucking into the hummus. At least I was deep enough to know that I’m shallow …

9
Raw Emotion

… AND SHALLOW
enough to know when I’m in too deep.

Life is like a restaurant menu; it never has what you order and even if it
has
, you always end up wanting what everybody else ordered anyway.
And
, no matter what’s dished up, there are bound to be hidden allergy-inducing, life-threatening ingredients that’ll have you hospitalized faster than you can say ‘organ donation’.

Which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised to look up from my Major Sulk – my normal demeanour when Julian insisted I join him in a tedious client dinner – to see my One-Lick-Stand gliding sinuously through Chez Nico restaurant towards our table.

My heart drilled against my Wonderbra. Ignoring my frantic sideway eye flickers in Julian’s direction, Zachary Phoenix Burne swaggered right up to us. He
gave
me that melt-in-the-mouth look, which, despite my terror, had every single drop of blood in my body saluting instantaneously. As false alibis crashed about in my cranium Julian jumped to his feet and extended a hand.