The Adultery Club (24 page)

When she saw me standing there, openmouthed and overcome, she simply smiled, winked, and dived gracefully backward into the water.

She was twenty-nine, her mood as pliant as her warm and willing body. I’d shed my burdensome virginity at seventeen to a girl my own age scarcely more experienced; two years on I still knew less about the way a woman worked than I did a jet engine. Kristene rectified my woeful ignorance. She guided my hands, my tongue, my cock, my mind, with wanton, audacious confidence, unashamedly taking as much pleasure as she gave.

It was clear from the beginning that our relationship, which occupied no dimension other than the gloriously physical, had no life outside this particular time and space. I was being admitted to a sensual Eden for reasons I neither knew nor cared to discover; soon, the door would close again. So I greedily slaked my thirst while I could. I returned to that lake day after day, gorging myself on her, determined to wring every moment of pleasure from her body in the hope that the memories would be enough to sustain me when she was gone.

They were not. For years afterward, sex with every
woman I bedded seemed as dry and stale as week-old biscuits when you have tasted nectar.

I’d forgotten how Kristene made my body feel until I met Sara. One remembers the taste of a strawberry: but even the most vivid memory is but a faint, dull facsimile compared to the sybaritic pleasure of biting into the strawberry itself.

That one night with Sara has reawakened senses I’ve not felt since those halcyon days by the lakeside when I was a priapic nineteen-year-old. How to describe the indescribable? Losing myself in her lush, ripe body, it was as if I was all cock, every muscle and sinew of my body throbbing with the heat of her. I felt her sweet wetness down to the tips of my toes. For the first time in my life, I actually lost my mind when I was inside a woman; even Kristene hadn’t come close to
this
. I was conscious of nothing else but the need to possess, and be possessed by, her.

A need utterly at odds with the fact that despite everything I still love my wife.

“Not really on
, is it, old man?” Giles says. “With the best will in the world. Not blaming you, of course, old chap, seen the girl myself; hard for a fellow to resist, absolutely. But the thing is, Nicholas, Mal’s a lovely woman. Man would be a fool to lose her for a pretty face.”

I stare morosely into my pint. “She’s a wonderful woman. I don’t deserve her.”

“So what’s this all about then?” Giles says kindly. “Not like you. Always such a
sensible
chap.”

“Not so sensible now, it would seem.”

He nods at the bartender. “Same again? Look, Nicholas, we all make mistakes. Fellow’s got to be a saint sometimes—the girls these days. Lot more forward than they used to be. Had a bit of a brush myself a few months ago, matter of fact. Girl on the seven-nineteen, always sits in the first carriage behind the engine, same as me. Charming girl. Works in advertising. Got chatting after a while, as you do. Quite brightened up the journey, if I’m honest. Anyway, next thing I know, she’s asking me to come with her to a gallery opening.”

“What did you say?” I ask curiously.

“Said no, of course,” Giles says briskly. “Look, old chap. Don’t mean to be a killjoy. But once you open that door—well, who knows where it’ll lead? I know I’m not every girl’s cup of tea, never been an oil painting, I know that; but Liz is rather
fond
, you know. Break her heart if she found I’d been dipping my wick elsewhere. Thing is, you and Mal have a good thing going. And there are your girls to think of. Why take the risk?”

I’ve asked myself the same thing a thousand times. Sleeping with her once, after the bombings, I could explain away; danger makes us all do things we wouldn’t normally. And perhaps that would have been it, if Sara hadn’t produced the opera tickets—how magnificent, that she should love Wagner!—and made it clear she
was
interested in a repeat performance. If we hadn’t run into Liz and Giles, I
would
have taken her to bed again. And this time, the only danger would have been of my making.

“Liz told Mal about last night, you know, Giles. Said you’d run into me in London and given me a lift back.”

“You were jolly lucky there, Nicholas.
Jolly
lucky. Could’ve
been very different if it’d been anyone else. But Liz is a good woman. She takes things at face value. You’ll be all right with her.”

I drain my pint and set it down. Giles is absolutely right. Five minutes earlier, and Mal’s best friend would have seen Sara all over me like a cheap suit. I should never have let her touch me in public; it was pure bloody recklessness. I should never have gone out with her again at all.

Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur
. The gods never let us love and be wise at the same time.

The thing is, one night with Sara wasn’t enough.
Nowhere near enough
.

I know this thing
has to end, and soon; the stakes are too high. I could lose everything I care about. Christ Almighty, I deal with marital train wrecks every day of the week. I had a client in my office just last Friday, been married two years and nine months. Wife had a couple of miscarriages, and the bloody fool ended up in bed with his secretary. He’s now looking at giving his wife his house and a rather nasty slice of the next few years of his life; and that’s a best-case scenario,
if
we pull the right judge. Meanwhile, the secretary has taken one look at the interim maintenance order and made for the hills.

I have to get Sara out of my system, once and for all. But denying myself only seems to feed the fever. Perhaps if she
stops
being forbidden fruit, if I let this thing run its natural course, it’ll burn itself out. I’m sure of it.

Valentine’s Day. Less than a month away. I’ll give myself
till Valentine’s Day, the day associated with love and romance the world over; and then I’ll put an end to it. We’ll have a final passionate liaison, and then bid each other a regretful, but amicable, farewell.

Somehow, putting a time limit on the affair eases my excruciating guilt. I’ve already broken my vows; the damage is done. A few weeks longer, that’s all I ask.

I’m not leading Sara on under false pretenses. She’s a young girl with everything going for her. It’s not like she’s in this for the long haul. She’s a smart woman; she knows I’m not a good bet for the future. And at her age, she’s probably not even thinking about the future anyway. She’s enjoying this for what it is: fun, good conversation, and bloody fantastic sex.

I send her half a florist’s stock on Monday by way of an apology for our ruined evening; and then a boxed set of the Wagner she loves so much the next day. I haven’t been caught up in such a romantic rush for years; on Wednesday I surprise myself by tracking down a rare out-of-print book of poetry—a revelation, that, to discover a dozen well-thumbed volumes of First World War poets on her bookshelves; I had expected airport bricks of the type Mal favors—while Thursday’s gift is inspired by a comment from one of my female clients.

“La Perla!” the woman says furiously; as she storms toward my office waving what turns out to be an American Express credit card statement. “I was married to the bastard twenty-seven years, and he never bought
me
bloody La Perla!”

Google divulges the nature of this particular feminine Holy Grail; unfortunately, I’m left to fend for myself when it
came to the delicate matter of making the actual purchase. I have no idea what size to buy Sara; cupping my hands in a broadly indicative mime elicits more hilarity than helpfulness. However, eventually we establish the parameters of my quest by dint of a rather unseemly comparison with several shop assistants’
embonpoint;
soon I am left to choose between a coffee-and-cream all-in-one lace confection, and an enticing plum brassière-and-panties set so flimsy it looks as if it will barely last the anticipated five-minute interlude between revelation and removal.

I buy both: one for now, and one for Valentine’s Day. It will be my farewell gift to her; a memento of one last spectacular night together before we say good-bye.

Into the folds of the coffee-colored silk, I slip a Claridge’s key card. And it is at Claridge’s that our affair moves up a gear, the day after I give her my final gift: a silver Tiffany bracelet I know she covets.

Valentine’s Day creeps ever closer as, over the course of the next few weeks, we meet up at the hotel again and again. I daren’t risk a late night more than once or twice a week, but there is the occasional afternoon tryst, when a client cancels; almost more passionate for its spontaneity. It’s costing me a fortune (my credit cards are near their limits; thankfully the firm’s profit share at the end of the financial year in April will clear them before Mal notices) but with the recklessness that characterizes this whole liaison, I find I don’t care. It’ll be over soon. When I run out of credit, I will simply pay cash.

I can’t tell Sara that I already plan to end our affair; that would be unkind. But I am careful, very careful, not to offer her more than I can give. Beyond the pleasure our
lovemaking affords me, I
like
her; very much. The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt her.

But nonetheless, there is a moment, the day before Valentine’s Day, when I almost slip.

I’m about to leave for the last train home after another wonderful evening with her when Sara takes it upon herself to treat me to one of her mind-blowing blow jobs. I should leave—I’m late already—but oh, God, it’s as if she has a dozen tongues, all conspiring to drive me out of my mind. Train times and anxious wives mean nothing. Promises, lies, love, and truth—nothing matters but the woman on her knees in front of me.
Hot, warm, wet …
Jesus Christ Almighty.

I let her take me to the brink, then abruptly pull away from her. More than anything, I want to drive her to lose control the way she does me; I want her writhing on the bed frantic for my touch. I taste her hot sweat when I kiss her skin, my mouth moving from breasts to belly button to her strangely naked mound. It’s like the whole of her body is an erogenous zone as she squirms erotically beneath me. I hold back, carefully controlling the pace, deliberately refusing to let her breathy little cries spur me faster.

Finally, when I know I’ve got her where I want her, I tongue her where she’s aching to be touched.

After she comes, I slide up the bed and rest my cheek on her belly, relishing its soft, cushiony feel. A relaxed warmth seeps through me as her heartbeat thuds, slowing now, a little above my ear. Unbidden, words float to the surface. “I love—”

I want to bite my tongue off. Good God, the blood rush to my cock must have caused a severe lack of its flow to my brain.

In the
here and now
I love her, certainly. But a woman reads far more into those three overused words than a man often means her to hear.

“I love to be here,” I amend hastily. “I feel safe, safer than anywhere else in the world.”

She’s quick to hide it; but not quick enough. I see hope in her eyes, and roll away from her, onto my back, so that she won’t see the answering pity and incipient claustrophobia in mine.
I thought she was smarter than that
.

A beat later, and she’s astride me, hands guiding my cock toward her, and I wonder if I imagined it after all. And then, with infuriating inevitability, my mobile telephone rings.