Objects of Desire (2 page)

‘Hello, Rocco, I won’t be long.’

‘Bad place to park, Mrs Rivers. Give me the keys, I’ll move your car.’

‘Couldn’t you just watch it? I won’t be long. Fifteen minutes?’

She was such a nice woman. Why not? He flouted the rules. ‘No more. Now promise? I guess I can bend the rules for the doctor.’

Anoushka smiled and patted him on the shoulder as she hurried through the lobby. There were smiles from several of the women busy at the reception desk as she acknowledged them with a wave while swiftly passing them bound for the bank of lifts. Too hot. It was always too hot in the hospital. She opened her coat, ignoring the fact that there was a button missing.

She stepped from the seclusion of the lift into the fifth-floor corridor. It smelled of hospitals and was filled with white-starched uniforms, the occasional harried-looking intern, and concerned relations rushing about. Robert would insist on having his office and examining rooms right in the midst of his patients. She went to the nurses’ station to greet the women briefly before heading for his office. She noticed the false smiles and the whispers. They never liked her visits. She represented a part of Robert’s life they could never experience, except marginally for a few hours at the annual party for the nurses she and Robert gave every
Christmas. They were all more than a little in love with Dr Robert Rivers and never thought her good enough for him. That was not a problem for Anoushka; other people’s opinions just washed over her. She greeted one of Robert’s colleagues, a doctor who was a close friend as well as one of his peers. They spoke briefly before she continued down the corridor towards Robert’s rooms.

She passed a distraught-looking young woman, tears streaming down her face. Anoushka placed an arm round her and led her to the waiting room, offering what few words of comfort she could before she asked a nurse to try and help.

Anoushka had compassion and worried that she saw so little in the faces and actions of the pretty and perky young nurses. They exuded something more like aggression, authority, power over the sick through their nursing. It always disturbed her. She would yet again talk to Robert about it. More than once he had suggested to her that she had a romantic idea about nursing and suffered from a Florence Nightingale syndrome, believing that all nurses chose their profession out of a deep sense of caring. True for many, but not all. Other factors, and the deeply disturbing aspects of working with the sick and dying, did sometimes eat away at compassion. As did the system.

Anoushka would listen but never really hear what he was saying. She always heard what she wanted to hear. It made life so much easier.

She entered Robert’s office. Mrs Winkler nearly
jumped out of her chair. ‘Mrs Rivers. I didn’t expect to see you.’

‘That’s because I’m a surprise. Hello, Mary.’

‘It’s always nice to see you, but you should have called.’

‘What? For an appointment to see my husband?’ And she smiled at Mary Winkler, meaning it as a joke.

It was not, however, taken as such. Mary Winkler was embarrassed and felt she had to defend herself. ‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I said that because the doctor isn’t here. You’ve just missed him. Shall I try to find him?’

‘No. I just came on the off chance that he might be able to come home early for a change. I seem to see even less of him now than when the boys were at home.’

Mrs Winkler, normally extremely discreet about Robert’s movements, felt strangely sorry for Anoushka. It prompted her to say, ‘He did say, if need be, I could reach him at home. He’s probably on the way there now. You’ve only missed him by a few minutes.’

Anoushka felt a surge of delight which showed on her face. She smiled and thanked Mrs Winkler. The two women spoke for several minutes and Anoushka left for home.

The Rivers house was large and very beautiful. Nineteen rooms of crisp, white, New England, turn-of-the-century architecture, many chimneys and grey shutters, on a rise of green lawn carved out of a white
birch wood only yards from the edge of the lake. Chimneys was one of those New England, picture postcard sort of houses. Anoushka never took it for granted, but always felt a surge of happiness when she drove down Longmeadow Road past her neighbours’ houses. Those too were impressive, set back on large plots of land or down winding drives through the birch trees.

She drove up the drive and round to the back of the house, directly into the garage where she parked her Mercedes Estate next to Robert’s Jag. She gathered up her shopping and walked across the lawn, now a white blanket of frost, and through the back door. The warmth felt good. It made her realise how raw and cold a day it was. She shivered and shrugged deeper into her coat. I could do with less grey and more sunshine, she thought, as she continued on through the house to the library where she knew Robert would be.

‘Robert, I’m home,’ she called out as she dropped her shopping on a chair in the hall.

‘In the library,’ he called back.

‘I know,’ she said, entering the room. ‘I saw the lights from the road. How really nice that you’re home early.’

Anoushka sat on the arm of Robert’s chair, placed an arm over the back of it and, leaning towards him, gave him a kiss on the cheek. She briefly caressed the back of his neck and then looked away from him to the flames leaping in the fireplace. She removed her hat and shook out her shoulder-length hair. To be in the
warmth and comfort of her own home was a great feeling.

‘Oh, that looks just what I need! I’ve had a hard day shopping for clothes for this evening,’ she told him as she caressed his hand and took from it the Lalique tumbler containing a vodka martini with a twist of lemon. She placed it to her lips and drank, at the same time placing his now empty hand on the top button of her coat.

Silently he undid the button and then the next and took notice of the one that was still missing, the threads that once held it in place. He nearly said something about it but didn’t. He had, several times, and still it was missing. There seemed no point. Especially not now.

‘You don’t mind my pinching your drink?’ she asked.

‘Of course not, I’ll make another,’ he told her and rose from the chair to go to the drinks tray set on a Queen Anne table in front of the library window. Still with his back to her, he asked, ‘Did you buy something really lovely, something special?’

Robert did so like beautiful things. She smiled because she knew how pleased he would be when he saw her shopping. ‘Very. I was extravagant,’ she told him as she balanced the glass on the back of the chair and finished unbuttoning her coat, slipping out of it, and removing her gloves.

‘Good,’ he told her. Still with his back to her he said, ‘I knew you wouldn’t mind. I’ve cancelled the country club this evening.’

‘But my shopping! My new clothes!’

He was surprised to hear the disappointment in her voice but it had no bearing on his resolve. ‘We can still get dressed up in our finery and have an evening together. Here, preferably. Dinner, a nice bottle of wine, some time just to talk.’

‘Robert, what a charming idea. Much better, very much better than the club.’ He felt a surge of relief to hear delight replacing disappointment in her voice. ‘There isn’t much in the refrigerator, I don’t go to the supermarket until tomorrow. I know, there’s some lobster bisque. We can have that to begin, and there’s endive. I can make us a salad, and a cheese soufflé.’

‘No!’ It came as a shout. Robert hadn’t meant it to, but the thought of Anoushka fussing in the kitchen: the whirr of the electric mixer’s stainless steel whisks, the egg shells lying on the marble counter top, the flour leaving a light film over everything, the mess, all the same as usual, as if nothing had changed. Anoushka always made a horrendous mess when she cooked without the help of their cleaner-cum-cook-cum-housekeeper. Somehow tonight he could no longer turn a blind eye to it, something he was usually good at. He turned to face his wife. The look of surprise on her face prompted him to disguise his anger.

‘No,’ he repeated more calmly. ‘That’s too much work and mess. Something easy, or we’ll go out for dinner somewhere nice. I don’t want you distracted in the kitchen and me getting into a good book. An evening together is what I had in mind.’

Anoushka chose to ignore the sharpness in his voice though it had felt like a sharp slap. ‘Then it’s one of Mrs Cooper’s casseroles from the freezer right into the oven, or we go out. Whichever you choose.’

‘You put the casserole in the oven and I’ll fetch us a good bottle of wine.’ He took a sip of his drink. The chill and bite of the vodka in his mouth felt good. It was what he needed.

‘The kitchen, the dining room, our upstairs sitting room? Where would you like to dine?’ she asked.

‘The dining room. We’ll bathe and dress for dinner in the dining room, you in your new outfit.’

Robert walked back to the chair where he had been sitting and picked up the arts magazine he had been reading. Anoushka was still sitting on the arm. He sat down. They gazed at one another. He very nearly began to speak to her right then and there, but lost his moment when she deliberately slid from the arm of his chair on to his lap and in the process yanked her cashmere jumper up and over her head to drop it on the floor in front of the fire. She removed his glass from his hand and put that on the floor too, and then, taking his hand in hers, placed them on her naked breasts.

‘This is not what I had in mind,’ he told her, not unkindly, while cupping one of her breasts in the palm of his hand and caressing it gently with the other. The large and voluptuous weight overflowed his palm. He liked to feel the heft of her breasts in his hands. Robert had always liked her breasts, the dark and sultry-looking nimbus that circled the fat erect nipples. He
had always found something powerfully decadent about Anoushka’s breasts. He liked her much better naked than clothed. Her body suited his sexual fantasies, desires, his strong and restless libido.

Though he never yearned for her sexually, all she had to do was present herself in that light and he found her irresistible. She had always been like that for him right from the first time she had seduced him. The feel of her skin, her natural scent, made even more voluptuous by the perfume she used: Paloma Picasso. He enjoyed her cunt, so soft and moist, and the deep coral colour of its fleshy and succulent outer and inner lips; the way it gripped him tight and teased him into powerful fucking. How clever and imaginative she was in her lust, the outright depravity she practised with her husband. In the dark, in the privacy of their sexual world, she was lewd, base even, and knew how to excite him. She fed his own sexual raunchiness with hers and he was always surprised how far they would go to experience sexual oblivion.

In their erotic life together, they gave in to the darker side of sex, wallowed in it. He never tired of her. Robert enjoyed satisfying their sexual hunger for each other. She had always had sexual power over him, and he had loved her for that. How well she hid her erotic soul from everyone but him. There was of course more to Anoushka than that, enough for him to have built a life with her. They had created two wonderful boys, been a family. Theirs
had been a good life, but now he could see clearly as he fondled Anoushka’s breasts, saw the lust come into her eyes and feel her squirm with pleasure as he lowered his mouth to bite into her nipples and suck deeply on them, that love, if it had ever really been there for him, was gone and had been for a long time. Lust had been carrying them for as long as he could remember. It came as a tremendous relief to him to see that so clearly and be able not only to admit it to himself but to act upon it.

He sat back in the chair, sighed and repeated himself. ‘As I said, this is not what I had in mind.’ He stroked her hair and caressed her cheek.

‘Well, this is exactly what I have had in mind for the last few hours. So much so I even went to the Clinic to find you, meaning to induce you to come home and make love to me.’

‘You were at the hospital?’

‘I just missed you.’

Anoushka unzipped Robert’s trousers. He tried to stop her but she laughed at him. It was a sensuous, wicked laugh. One that insinuated he was behaving foolishly. A knowing laugh that said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll not resist me.’ She cupped one of her breasts in her hands and fed it into his mouth by first grazing his lips with her erect nipple until they parted and he hungrily licked and sucked with a wild abandon.

He was erect and in her hands, pulsating. It brought him to his senses. He eased her from him and gazed at her, touched the dot-sized beauty mark just above the
right corner of her lips. ‘You’re not listening to me, Anoushka.’

‘No,’ she admitted happily and rose from the chair to stand facing him. She took her drink, drained her glass and handed Robert his. He too finished his drink. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she told him.

Anoushka hurried from the library and Robert tried to compose himself. Not easy. He was still erect and full of lust which had no place in his resolve to implement the drastic change necessary to his life. In only a matter of minutes Anoushka was back. Seeing her enter the room, he yet again marvelled at how sensual a body his wife had. Still, after two children, she possessed the narrowest of waists. It was as if she were reading his mind. She went directly to him, delighted that his condition had remained the same as when she had left him. She bent over him, moved her breasts seductively, caressingly, back and forth, across his face. This woman, so sedate, cautious, somewhat remote in her public persona – who when clothed was a tinge slovenly and not very stylish unless prompted by her husband or an insistent saleslady – how whorish and exciting she could be in her sexual persona.

She was taunting him, denigrating his sexual prowess, and he didn’t like it. He grabbed her by the wrist and she fell against him, whispering something obscene in his ear. When she stood up, he rose from the chair with her.

Anoushka began kissing him all over his face, and
between kisses told him, ‘I want to come in your mouth, feel you deep inside me, taste your come.’ Pink with embarrassment now, she whispered again in his ear, ‘Oral, anal, cuntal sex. Now wouldn’t that be a lovely way to begin our evening?’ He took her in his arms and kissed her deeply, and it was a kiss not devoid of genuine passion.