The Boy Who Fell to Earth (21 page)

Whether it was the alcohol or the nervous tension, I laughed so hard I thought I’d rupture a key internal organ.

‘Life went bad for us blokes once they invented wheelie bins. As soon as they put wheels on the dustbins, we men weren’t needed any more.’

His rough-and-ready charm softened my resentment like sun on butter. ‘I don’t know. I could definitely have done with a man around while I’ve been raising Merlin. His father pissed off at the first diagnosis.’

‘Yeah?’ His gaze was like the touch of a warm hand and I felt myself unclench.

‘We met on a plane. Phoebe got me a birthday upgrade to New York. Jeremy was the most self-centred, arrogant smart-arse I’d ever encountered.’

‘So you got up the duff by accident?’

‘No. I fell completely and utterly in love with the bastard, got married and had his baby.’

‘And what a baby.’ Archie raised his brows. ‘It must have been bloody hard yakka. You should get a medal. How could the 24-carat pissant abandon youse?’

‘My ex-husband is a selfish, mean-spirited, low-down snake … but I don’t say that in any disparaging way. To know him was to love him … until you really got to know him and then you wanted to kill him,’ I added.

‘There’s only two types of people in a divorce. Those who screw you over and those who get screwed. If you’re unlucky enough to be the one gettin’ shafted, they do it without lubricant in every orifice, with no foreplay, and then cut you open with a chainsaw and shove maggots in your weepin’ wounds.’

‘Divorced people – you can spot us a mile away,’ I agreed. ‘We get that tortured, soul-destroyed, shell-shocked look of prisoners of war who have just tunnelled to freedom …’

‘Yeah, only to find ourselves smack bang in the middle of the Battle of the bloody Somme.’

‘Exactly. Anyway, if it makes you feel any better, I’m a much bigger failure than you, Archie. I’m a teacher who has failed to teach her own son. I should also be deputy head by now, but instead I’m trying to teach English literature to teens whose reading material is limited to takeaway menus. My GCSE-level English class told me recently that they hate books, especially when they have to read them.’

‘Literature should be banned. It’s the only way to make reading popular again,’ Archie teased.

‘Yes, besides the kind of books which have a sex goddess on the jacket and no jacket on the sex goddess … And whatever happened to my own Great Novel?’

‘Well, what the hell’s stoppin’ ya? Just put the word “memory”, “road” or “ghost” in the title, which means that it’s gonna have a shitload of war and torture in it,
and
then it’ll be shortlisted for every bloody prize goin’.’

As I laughed, Archie switched off the football match and turned to face me. ‘By the way, foreplay for Australian men is the technical term for turning off the telly,’ he said, and then he leant forward and kissed me.

I gave the surprised gasp of a warm body entering a chilly sea. I felt an instinctive sexual quickening within me, an unexpected fizz of exhilaration. He tasted like coffee beans, a smoky, burnt flavour of amaretto and caramel. His spicy, musky tang of sweat and wine and smoke enhanced my senses. His beard was rough on my face. I savoured the weight and bulk and muscle of the man. An electric current ran from my tonsils to my toes and quite a few places in between. I stopped fretting and felt myself vanish into the moment.

When we broke apart, Archie gave me a look which was both tender and lascivious. Even though my heart was beating insubordinately, I decided to utilize Archie’s Aussie foreplay technique in reverse and flicked the telly back on. Confused, I slunk to my end of the couch and pretended to be riveted by a re-run of a Romanian darts final that had come on. Big emotional displays were no longer my forte. These days I was better at bitterness and sarcasm. I sat in taut, bamboozled silence until Merlin rattled his key in the lock. He practically Nureyeved down the hall.

‘My first date!’ He was helium-filled with happiness. ‘What a majestic evening. I had a very special moment in my life. The atmosphere was electric. I ripped off my shirt and started busting out some phenomenal moves. It made me feel immortal … I think I have a mesmerizing personality, don’t you, Mum?’

I laughed. ‘Yes, darling, you do.’ My son seemed to have
ripened
and grown almost luminous. He launched himself at me for his usual bearhug, squeezing the breath out of me as though I were a fleshy accordion. His shivering delight transmitted itself to me.

‘Lucky Merlin,’ Archie said softly, an audible smile in his voice.

I wished Archie goodnight with the formality of a French courtier and retreated to my bedroom. Shortly after, a note was slipped under my door.

Just got a very interesting call from the chairman of the International Missed Golden Opportunities Commission.

I think they want to honour you at their next big gala.

I gave them your number.

Signed, YRRGC (Your Resident Rock God Chum)

I lay in bed, wide awake, Archie’s touch whispering away on my skin. I found myself wondering how he would move in bed, how he’d smell, how his powerful legs would feel wrapped around me. And then I heard music. Soft, liquid notes lured me out into the corridor and Pied Pipered me to the top of the stairs. A cascade of melody spilt into the hall below. It was Archie, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. The surprising poignancy of the composition and the tender timbre of his voice gave me goose-pimples on my goose-pimples. By the time the song concluded, Archie had gained an entire new dimension. There was a fascination about him now. Retreating to my bed, I realized that the man was not a Neanderthal after all. He’d positively moved up the evolutionary scale to Homo erectus. It was obvious to me that Archie had been putting on an act … As had I.

13

Dr Love is in the Building

I AWOKE NEXT
morning to a stripe of warm, syrupy sun across my bed. I had a busy yet boring day ahead – grocery shopping, taking Merlin to Alexander technique swimming class and the torture of trying to help with his school assignments – but the thought of Archie’s kiss and the melody of his song kept a smile in my eyes all afternoon, even in the supermarket express lane, where the queue was so long you could get a pap smear, a manicure, pedicure and divorce and still not lose your place in the line.

Why, I wasn’t sure. Archie was the opposite of what’s usually required for the role of romantic hero. He was the very antithesis of the Sensitive New-age Gladiator with a portfolio of capital venture investments tucked up each sleeve of the kind currently favoured by fashionistas. The rangy old rocker had a muscular build, but it was going a bit soft in the middle. He had a good head of hair, yes, but lassoed into a ratty ponytail. The man had a face only a mother could love – a blind mother. And yet I astonished myself with an impulse to kiss him once more.

I began to find his sayings oddly enchanting. When I saw him on the street, I would suddenly start waving wildly, as though summoning rescue. Obviously, my libido was not reporting to mission control but following some kind of renegade X-rated sat-nav system. I began to linger and stall over the kitchen table, pouring yet another cup of tea, hoping that he’d pull me into an embrace. And pretty soon there were quite a few heated entwinings on the landing, in the hall, by the washing machine.

Merlin was predictably pragmatic. ‘I saw you kissing Archie this morning. Are you two actually having sexual intercourse?’ he asked, in front of my sister, who nearly fell off her chair with shock.

‘Of all men? I thought you said he was an animal?’ Phoebe asked, bug-eyed with amazement.

‘All I can say is, God bless the wild kingdom.’

‘But, just last week you loathed him.’

‘I still do, in some ways! I’m astounded people don’t stop him on the street to ask if he’s the guy who played the man-eating Alien from Planet Yuk in “The Extraterrestrial Cannibals are Coming”. The list of reasons not to fancy Archie is jaw-droppingly long. Maybe it’s simply the fact that he likes Merlin and that Merlin likes him?’

‘Well, I think you’d better go to bed with him and find out,’ Phoebe suggested, grinning her head off.

And later that night, when Archie brushed a fingertip along the back of my neck, the liquid heat of desire flowed through me. I felt myself slip inside the moment as though it were a warm bath. We lay on my bed and the heat of his body radiated into mine. The soft night was charmed, as if some kind of spell had been cast, and a short time later, we were sweating away joyfully in the nude.

When I woke, Archie was leaning up on one elbow watching me. His smile broke on me like a big, warm wave on a rock. ‘Boom chicka wah wah,’ he enthused, his eyes closing reverentially. ‘What a ride!’ He flopped back on to the pillows. ‘I’m gonna start puttin’ bets on you at the Grand National.’

‘You’re one to talk! Those sexual techniques of yours are not for amateurs. People shouldn’t try them in their own homes, unsupervised,’ I replied with wonderment, lazily pulling on my knickers. ‘If you were a snooker player, you’d be blowing on your metaphorical snooker cue right now.’

‘I’ve applied for a patent on my recipe – seventy-three minutes of witty conversation, sixteen jumbo-sized compliments,
zero
references to footy or sports cars and some elaborate, laboratory-tested tongue-work which I cannot divulge at this point – but I do have a rival in Brazil, apparently.’ And then he returned the compliment. ‘But, Lou,
you’re
so good in bed even the next-door neighbours are havin’ a cigarette.’

Within seconds we were going at it again, me pressed back on the bed, my lace panties around one ankle and my ankles around his ears. Even the neighbours’
pets
would be lighting up this time. And this is pretty much how we remained for the rest of the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, Merlin arrived home unexpectedly early from the museum and burst into my bedroom. His face was twisted into amazement, as though he’d been struck by some gargantuan hammer. ‘I’m flabbergasted!’

I yanked the covers over my breasts and stiffened, awaiting a body blow.

‘I was in the museum when it suddenly hit me. About the nature of time! Time is the universe’s way of stopping everything happening at once!’ He wrung his hands in wonderment and sighed dramatically. ‘I’ve also worked out that when a person smiles it’s just a thought appearing on your face, isn’t it, Mum? I couldn’t wait to tell you. Oh,’ he sighed, ‘the trouble with factoids is that there’s just so many of them.’ Then he climbed into bed with us, beaming cheerfully. ‘So, what are we going to do now?’

I erupted into a fit of relieved giggles which in turn made Archie guffaw. And this pretty much set the tone for the next few days. Our house became a cosy cocoon of love and laughter, full of thrown-together bubble-and-squeak meals and impromptu comic mayhem as Archie mucked around with Merlin. The happy pandemonium was soundtracked with snatches of music, as Archie twanged away at kitsch country-and-western ballads. The songs became even funnier when we had to explain their meanings to Merlin. ‘I Hate Every Bone in her Body, Except Mine’ proved particularly tricky. As did ‘I Ain’t Ever Gone to Bed with an Ugly Woman, but I Woke up with a Few’. And ‘It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night that Chewed My Ass All Day’. I felt a spreading thrill as I watched Merlin blossoming in the domestic fug of all that friendly warmth and comforting camaraderie. No longer was I earthed by the gravity of all life’s obstacles and impossibilities. Instead I found myself buoyant with optimism.

‘If there’s a happy hour in bars, does that mean there’s a sad hour too?’ Merlin asked me earnestly, as I kissed him goodnight later that weekend. ‘The American Constitution says you must pursue happiness. But how do you know when you’ve caught it?’

How indeed? Ecstatically entwined in the small hours soon after, I did feel a shiver of pure joy. It was a feeling it took me a moment to recognize. Could this rough-and-tumble, ramshackle man really squeeze all the misery out of me and fill the hollows of my bones with happiness? Could he really turn my prose deepest purple like that? Just as well I
wasn’t
writing that novel, because ‘The Colour Purple’ had already been taken as a title.

Later I heard someone uttering a heartfelt endearment which included the word ‘adore’ and realized, as Archie’s tongue flicked back and forth across my nipple, that it was my own voice. A light of hope crept into my eyes like a timid guest. Could I really fall for a man again? I advanced towards the thought on tiptoe, as if I were afraid to wake it. Maybe life was making it up to me? Maybe this old rocker was the joyful twist in a tortured narrative? Over the years, I’d become a tough crowd of one. But something about the man made me let down my guard. Who would ever have thought that Archie would be the citadel-storming, moat-swimming parapet breacher?

A 4×4 vroomed past shuddering with
doomf doomf
bass and I didn’t even care. My mood was so elated that I suddenly found myself kindly disposed towards logoed clothing, nose rings, Western women converting to Islam, piercings, Botox, corporate jargon and personal trainers. People famous for just being famous no longer irked me. Nor did upward inflections, incorrect grammar, Conan the Grammarians, instruction manuals, leaf blowers and stupid names like Satchel, Sage, Moon, Starlite, Melody and Apple. I seemed to have undergone a curmudgeonectomy.

Archie rolled over on top of me. Looking up at his warm, smiling face it suddenly didn’t seem so strange to love him.

When a knock roused me from bed early on Friday morning, I had to tear myself away from Archie’s embrace as though the man were made of Velcro. In the crystal autumnal morning, the golden-tinged leaves shimmered outside the window as I padded blissfully down the stairs.

But if I’d been in a movie, the water in my vases would have started to quiver and shake in warning that something monumental was about to happen. Oblivious, I trotted to the front door, all dishevelled, reeking of the rich, sweet-and sour scent of love-making. I opened the door wearing nothing more than Archie’s shirt and a satisfied smile – to find my ex-husband standing on the threshold, his arms bedecked with flowers.