Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (16 page)

take a warm bath, put the feet in hot water and mustard, take gruel and then go to bed well covered in order that we may perspire freely

But it doesn’t wipe him out.

You think of Gabriel deep into that hurting night, your hand between your legs, balming the ache, trying to press it out. It felt like he was pushing you deeper and deeper into life and it was all brought so suddenly to a halt: because he said that the rules should no longer exist. Why did he have to destroy the secret world you’d created for each other? He smashed it with love, with attachment. There’s no returning now, for God knows where it would end up if you did.

You imagine Gabriel waiting for the call that will not come. You’ve waited so many times in the past; a hostage to a lover’s silence and you know too well the heart-slam of what it’s like. You’re tinkering so thoughtlessly with his
life and not cleaning up the mess. You’ve created a woman’s dream lover who knows something of the secrets of what women really want, and what they don’t. But what
do
women really want?

You’re not sure, now.

A cherishing? Money? Security?

They don’t, necessarily, want to fall in love.

Cole lies with his back to you and the arch of your foot locks into the warm curve of his calf; you often do this as he sleeps.

never sit in a thorough draft

The phone rings the next day and the next, Gabriel’s usual time, and his voice is on the answering machine but you do not pick it up. After the call on day three, at the same time, you slam the door shut on the flat.

You want the taxi drivers again. They take their breaks in the green cabby’s hut by Notting Hill Gate. The Scottish one told you that, the one with the face that looked as if it had been scrubbed raw by the wind, he told you he wanted you every day inside the hut, as he shoved his prick into your aching, numbing cunt; he said that he’d boot the dinner lady out. He wanted all his mates there too, he said, as he flipped you over, he wanted you spread on the table, he said, as he was fucking you up the ass.

You sit at the bus stop opposite the green hut. You’re
perched, uncomfortably, on the red plastic bar. You will wait it out. It takes one and a half hours. The first driver you spoke to pulls up and you walk to his window. You don’t say anything. He looks at you, he grins, he slides his window down.

I want a woman as well, you say.

He sucks in his breath, you can see his savouring but he doesn’t want to let it out. Uh huh, he says. I’ll need a bit of time, he says. Let’s make it six o’clock.

You go to a public phone box. Tell Cole you’ll be home late. Martha’s had a trauma, she needs to go out and have a drink, talk it through. You walk from the box, thinking of being licked by a woman while the men watch; of being urinated on, of being filled up.

You wear just a bathrobe as you open the hotel room door. You don’t want them to see your clothes, to read you in any way, you don’t even want to give them your voice.

Two men this time, and a woman. As soon as you see her, it’s wrong. She’s young, wary, a friend not a partner, in it for a laugh. She wears a white shirt that’s grubby round the collar and you’re annoyed by that. She’s assessing you, reading you, she knows you in a way the men never will. It’s suddenly shameful. You lie down, awkwardly, on the bed. The sheets are too slippery. You feel cold. You can hear the television news too loud in the next room. Nothing works, it’s utterly unerotic, it hurts. The woman stands back, watches, plays with a button on her shirt. You
feel your body shutting down, bit by bit, like an office block’s lights being switched off at night. You push the men off and tell them to leave.

Oh, come
on,
says the one you began it with.

He’s different this time, you don’t like his tone.

Just
get out.

You cannot look them in the face; you stumble to the bathroom, the taste of metal in your mouth. You lock yourself in and sit on the toilet, shaking, and then suddenly retch into the toilet bowl, retch and retch, as if you are trying to heave your insides out.

The door outside clicks shut; they are gone. The room that’s left behind looks cheap, tatty, forlorn. You go to the cupboard, need your clothes, warmth, need your lovely tweed skirt. Your bag isn’t there. Fuck.
Fuck.
With your wallet in it. Your credit cards and driving licence. Your name. Your address.

Oh God, not that.

It was the woman, it was in her face at the start.

Think.

You can’t report it. You’ve already given the lobby your credit card imprint, good, good, but your keys, your keys: they’re in your coat pocket, thank God. But your name, your address and then the quick hot tears come and come. You push to the bathroom, to the shower’s strong hot water and scrub at your skin, scrub it into rawness and then you sag against the tiles and tears and water spill down. You slide to the floor and you stay hunched in the
shower’s palm for a very long time, weeping and weeping until you hiccup to a stop. You turn off the tap. You’re still, and wet, and shivery. You can’t think how you’ll get home. A taxi’s out of the question, you feel like you’ll never be able to step into one again, alone or with Cole or anyone else.

They have your name and address. They have your name and address.

Your weeping, again. Years of not crying in it, it’s all, finally, coming out.

the importance of good food

You call your bank from the hotel room. You check out. Tell the crisp young man behind the desk you’ve left your bag at home, you don’t know why you need to explain that, you have to stop, you’re talking too much: he knows you’re lying.

You have some loose change in your pocket; you ring Cole from a phone box down the street, you’re sure he’ll be working late. He is, of course. You tell him your handbag’s been stolen and you’re stuck. I’ll be right over, he says. You go to a nearby Starbucks and wait, hunched over a hot chocolate, stilling your tear gulps until Cole strides into the cafe and you walk into his strong arms and the tears, once again, come and come. He holds you into stillness and then goes to the counter and comes
back gentle with a tray of sandwiches you can’t eat.

Let’s get a cab home, he says, I’ve got some dosh.

No, no, I feel like the tube, it’s quicker. I just want to get home.

OK. Whatever.

You walk down the street with Cole’s arm firm round your shoulder. Why is he so good at times like this? Your heart is blown open by his kindness, like a window by a sudden gust.

I love you, you say, in thanks.

You used to say it every day, once.

old linen is invaluable

Over the next few days you try and push the men to the back of your head, you must, for you’ll be swamped by anxiety if you don’t. You’ve got to get yourself in order; you’ve acted appallingly and it’s time to stop the silliness, to tackle your regular life. You book a massage, facial, pedicure. Scrub the flat. Ring some old girlfriends, make dates for coffees and movies and lunch. Clear a space in the study for your laptop and books: you’ve never, yet, bothered to do that.

You throw out your pill packet.

When you are ready, when the idea of sex doesn’t fill you with dread, you ask your husband to dip his tongue inside you and to curl it round your clitoris; it has taken you four
years to ask him to do this, to ask him to do anything specific that you’d like.

I love those books, he says.

He parts your legs and puts his tongue between them and you turn to the windows and stretch your arms above your head and float on your back: Cole knows, now, that he must focus on your clit to pleasure you, he must wake it up. And on a drizzly winter Sunday you stay in bed for most of the day as if you’ve both never been married or never preferred sleep. His fingers run over your skin like a slow trickle of water and you curl and doze and kiss and nuzzle into the gathering dark and at the end of it you lie quietly and listen to his deep, regular breathing and fall into his sleeping.

Cole takes the Monday off work, he’s never done that for you before. It reminds you of Edinburgh, when he wanted to be in bed, with you, more than anything else.

You’re remembering him after so long, the man you loved. Remembering a time when the love was as clear and clean as a fall of Christmas snow. It was simple. You loved each other, you trusted each other, you weren’t like other couples. Your husband was all-calming. There was no doubt like a sickness, no poison doing its work. You remember the innocence of it all once.

Before a hotel room in Marrakech, when your heart lurched.

it is most pitiable that a woman whose physical condition is sound be incapacitated by a passionate temper

Another letter. You’d almost forgotten them. You can barely read them now, they reek of emotion, your heart and your sex have closed to him.

You’re soaked through my days, I cannot scrub you out.

You return to Cole, in the bedroom. Shut its door behind you, not sure why.

The phone rings, weekday mornings, his usual time. You never pick it up.

Hello, on the answering machine, hello?

Curled on the sofa, your hands between your legs,
willing him to stop. Trying to forget it all, to immerse yourself in being, for Cole, the good wife.

The phone rings late, ten p.m. Cole tells you to ignore it. You know who it is; he’s never dared to intrude like this in your life. You don’t want your husband to hear his voice on the answering machine. You snatch up the phone. Pretend it’s Martha, tell Gabriel you’re tired and not to ring so late, you’ll call back in the morning.

Your hands shake as you replace the receiver.

You tell him, the following morning, not ever to ring again after hours. You tell him that you cannot see him any more, he has learnt enough. The lessons have stopped. No, wait, he says. You hang up. Your answering machine’s left on and it’s on for ever after that.

Please call, he says, the next morning, on the machine. We need to talk, to sort this out. I love you, he says, and it stops you as you listen. I love you, he says again.

How many times had you said
I love you
in your twenties to men who didn’t answer? That’s beautiful, one said, beautiful, as if he was collecting the phrase in a scrapbook, pinning it to a display board like so many butterflies. How many times has something died within you as the words slipped from your mouth? And now you’re on the other side, doing it back.

But this is different, you tell yourself, it’s for the best, you tell yourself. You’re addled by the thought of the life
you’ve been leading, in all its selfishness, but it’s better, in the long run, this giving nothing back. You didn’t ask for complication, burden, mess.

You feel suddenly ruthless and clear-headed. You feel a sliver of ice in your heart.

those who take opium in the first instance become so enslaved to it that at first they can do nothing without it and finally nothing with it

Gabriel is waiting on the doorstep as you step out on a Monday morning, he’s beside you as you walk down the street. He tells you you have to leave Cole, he’ll make you; you’re too cowardly to seize your own happiness, you have to begin afresh.

Unpredictability is ragged within him now, he’s unshaven, he looks as if he hasn’t slept: it confirms that you made the right decision. So this is the flip side of the sunny actor who’s always
on
in real life, playing his part. You quicken your pace. Gabriel catches up, he’s almost snagging your heels. You tell him, without looking at him, not to come to your flat, not to ring. You turn into the newsagent but he’s there right behind you, close to your ear. You snap at him to stop it as you pick up a newspaper. You know the Indian
woman behind the till, she always teases Cole and you about when you’ll be starting a family, with a gentle, sideways dip of her head; it’s become a running joke. But Gabriel is beside you now and you look at the confused smile on her face and you push past him: how dare he ram into your life like this. He steps in front of you, holds you hard by the shoulders, his fingers pitted into your flesh.

Listen to me, he says, listen.

Go away, you say, swerving from him.

You can never sleep with him again, can never see him again. Why doesn’t he know that? You stride off. Walk round the block. Look behind you, he is gone.

Go back to your flat.

But what is this urge within you, this madness kicking out as strong as a horse in a box? You sit on the edge of the couch, your fingers worry the cushion’s edge, you bite your lip. You do not understand this want to do it all again, right now, to run from the room’s quiet and find more and more anonymous fucks. This urge within you that is brutal, terrible, masculine, beautiful, base, that cannot be stamped out, that is all, bewilderingly, back.

the young wife’s home! is there not in these words a happy union of the tenderest memories and highest aspirations?

Cole still wants sex his way, he’s not obedient enough but at the moment you don’t care, you just wanted to be sated, filled up.

He forces you to touch yourself, he pushes your fingers between your legs and then brings your fingers to your mouth; taste yourself, he insists, come on, as you press your lips together and move your head from side to side, trying to keep him out. Mmm, you smell of you, he says, as he nuzzles your face. He wants you to go further, further, not to turn back from the path you are on and you ask him to slow down, to be gentle, to stop, but he doesn’t listen, he never listens enough. Down he’ll go again when you just wish he’d halt; to savour, to recover but he won’t stop, he’ll kiss you hard on the lips with his face
smeared with your cum, it’s all the things you don’t want.

He’s not like Gabriel, he doesn’t listen, he’s not polite. But you don’t check his disobedience because it doesn’t matter enough: so much of the sex is in your head, and he never has to know that. When he’s in you, when his face is between your legs, you’re thinking of someone else.

Who would do exactly what you wanted.

Who said you were turning into a different woman.

Who is not allowed back.