The Lemon Grove (14 page)

He’s been running. His shorts are saturated. When did he slip out? Why didn’t she see him? Did
he
see
her
? He hauls himself over the little wall. As his shorts strain, she can see the outline of his cock. He pads across the terrace like a puma, then he’s gone. Out of sight. She can hear the squeak of his sweaty palm on the door jamb as he supports himself with one hand and flips off his trainers with the other.

There’s a prolonged silence as she waits to hear his footsteps. He must have gone up to his room. The voice takes her by surprise.

‘You didn’t sleep either, then?’

It seems to be coming from directly above her, from the kitchen window. She doesn’t stir. Concentrates on a sandy gecko astride the rim of a chunky terracotta pot.

‘Jenn? Can we talk?’

She cannot say the words. He runs the tap. She hears him sighing as he fills a glass. She pictures the undulations in his throat as he slakes his raging thirst, and her stomach folds in on itself. The glass is set down firmly. She hears it hit the table with a decisive thud. She’s thinking it all out, preparing her big speech, when he comes back over the terrace. He seems to flicker in and
out of her vision, like a cine film; he’s there, yet he is not real. She knows what she has to say; it must be good and it must be final.

As though he’s read her eyes and knows his fate, Nathan turns sharply, stops with his back to her and hesitates, his shoulders rising and falling. He starts to say something then checks himself; strides back inside the villa. Minutes later, she hears the shower in the main bathroom being powered up. She feels vulnerable, rejected. She heads inside to find him but steadies herself; lingers in the kitchen, thinking, thinking. She puts the kettle on for coffee.

He is sitting in his underpants at the desk in the bedroom, deep in thought, deep in flow, his pen moving deftly across the page. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust and the image takes her by surprise – although it shouldn’t. There was a time, not so long ago, when barely a morning went by without her coming down to find him this way, hunched over the kitchen table, hammering the keys of his clunky old typewriter. He told her that it made him feel more of a writer – the travail of banging away on his Olympia. But that last batch of rejections seemed to snuff out Greg’s flame for good.

He still wrote – but he wrote to order, not for himself. He wrote articles for journals; he wrote about the forgotten women poets of the Romantic era, Hemans and Landon. Who even cares about this stuff? he’d say, booting up his laptop with a weary resignation as she was turning in for the night. But right now she knows it’s not a Romantic driving his motor. He is working on something of his own. Something new, perhaps – she knows better than to ask. She pauses at the door to watch him a while. His forearms and neck are reddish-brown, but his torso is white. The sight of him stirs pity in her – a new ingredient in their relationship, and one she doesn’t like.

His pen hovers as he registers her presence, before diving back to the page with renewed alacrity. She tiptoes over and sets the tray down to the side of him. He pauses to take in the coffee pot, freshly made lemon juice and yesterday’s pastry, revived in the oven. He’s aware of what this is, a peace offering, and he takes her wrist and squeezes it, kisses it – then he takes up his pen again.

‘Somewhere there’s beauty; somewhere there’s freedom; somewhere he is wearing his white flower,’ he says.

‘Beautiful.’

‘Isn’t it? If only it were mine.’

She hovers there, hoping he’ll elaborate, but he turns
back to the page, twirling the pen between his fingertips. She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder; leaves him to it.

She runs a bath. She tips in a miniature bottle of rosehip bubble bath. She’s going to lie back and close her eyes for ten minutes; and when she opens them she will start anew. She can draw a line and move forward. She smiles, happy, wistful, as she bins the Malmaison bottle and remembers their night in Edinburgh. Their tenth wedding anniversary. She’d impulse-bought a wine-coloured basque and matching suspender belt from a lingerie boutique on the high street, but Greg was uneasy; he hadn’t wanted her ‘trussed up’. She felt foolish as she took the unwanted underwear back the next day, still in the plastic bag with the labels intact. She took him for lunch with the refund. She still felt foolish as she ordered a bottle of burgundy she knew he’d adore but could never afford.

The bubbles are spilling over the side and she snaps the taps off. When she slides in, water sloshes onto the floor. For a moment there is silence. Calm. The peace is broken by Greg calling out to Emma that he’ll be with her in a moment. She hears the grudging scrape of his chair, the slap of his feet as he huffs past the en-suite
door and turns into the corridor. Is he talking to Nathan out there? She strains an ear through the rumble of the pipes. She can hear Nathan’s nervous laughter; see his dimple as he smiles and tries to please. His white, even teeth. She squeezes her thighs tight together; and how quickly her resolve and regret turns to hunger.

She ducks her whole head beneath the water and tries to wrench herself free of him; dampen her thoughts with the mundane. When did Greg say they were replacing Emma’s temporary plaster? Do they have to return the crutches? Does she need to give their bank a call to check whether the travel insurance that comes with their Premium Account has excesses or exclusions? It’s useless. The smarting between her legs is painful now, impossible to ignore. She should attend to it before it takes over.

Uneasy with the feel of her fingers, she slides the soap bar between her legs. It slips away; she has to dig her nails in to get some purchase. Slowly, she eases it to the spot where the ball of his hand had held her, his for the taking. She moves the bar gently, down then up, down then up, tentatively at first, out of synch with her accelerating heartbeat. Down then up, again and again, until she is no longer conscious of the act itself; she is looking down on her oscillating wrist slamming in and out. Bath water slaps onto the floor in rhythmic
waves. Jenn lifts her hips, her face screwed up, her eyes tight shut to the whitewashed wall of the archway, just down there. Yesterday. She fills herself with the feel of his hands on her waist, the veins pumped up on his wrists as he felt for her; lifted her up. And the smell of him, the salty damp in his hair; his sweat, so complex in all its notes, all of which mingle to conjure the smell of Youth. She stops. Her wrist is numb from squeezing the soap so hard. A few more strokes and she’ll be gone; but with it, he is gone, too – and she can’t bear that. She wants to hold on to it – to him – as long as she can. She wants to turn herself right round and kiss him, like he asked her to. She wants to kiss him, hard, on the mouth. And then. And then she’ll let him go.

‘Jenn! For God’s sake, open the door!’

She stiffens, drops the soap. The voice comes again.

‘What’s the matter?’

She can hear it in her voice, the automatic, gay cadence of a child who’s been caught with a biscuit before tea.

‘You’ve locked the door,’ he says. Not a question but a statement. He shakes the handle for emphasis.

‘Jesus, Greg – just use the main bathroom.’

She is no longer squirming, but indignant. Irate.

‘I need to speak with you.’

The angry ball of heat moves up from her thighs to
her stomach and continues to thud as she steps out of the bath and pads to the door, her wet hair dripping a trail behind her.

She pauses before she undoes the catch. She feels exposed; found out. It’s obvious what she’s been doing; what she’s been thinking. She winces at the tell-tale red of her cheeks. She swoops for a towel, dabs between her thighs and drapes it around her. A pulse in her neck beats fast as she slides back the lock and wonders:
Did he tell her
,
then?
Has Nathan told Emma? Even if not, is this how it will be from now on? Every raised voice, every question or silence met with
is this it?
Greg pushes his way in.

‘It’s Emma,’ he says. He presses his lips together, tries a smile; if anything, he looks embarrassed. ‘Can you give her a hand? She needs a bath.’

Her relief at this stay of execution is quickly overtaken by ire. Does he not even suspect? Is it beyond his imagination that a young, beautiful male might desire his ageing wife? She slips into a towelling robe. Her voice comes out as a rasp, dried and brittle.

‘So do I! Couldn’t you or Nathan sort it out between you?’

A breeze from the balcony drifts across her Judas cheeks. She puts a hand to her face, still hot to the touch.

A spark of anger snaps in his expression. ‘Nathan?
You think that’s appropriate? You’d be okay with him seeing our daughter naked?’

No. I wouldn’t, she thinks, and a zip slides down, opening her up; her nerve endings raw and exposed. Greg bends from the waist to retrieve the bar of soap from the floor and places it back in the soap dish. Without any further deference to her, he sheds his underpants and steps into the bath.

‘Oh yes! Nice …’ He lowers himself down; releases the plug to let out some of the water. ‘I was thinking we might drive up to Sóller later, seeing as we didn’t quite make it yesterday. What d’you reckon? Nice lunch at the Gran Hotel?’ He immerses himself fully beneath the bubbles. She hears him pop up again. ‘The number’s on the cork board if you fancy giving them a ring.’

She pictures him wiping the suds from his eyes, a foamy hat on his head, looking a tiny bit baffled and a tiny bit betrayed as he registers the empty room.

He is there in the corridor, standing barefoot on one of the chintzy pews. He is on his tiptoes, his upper body wedged in the small, circular window as he leans out trying to reach something; she tries not to stare at the taut brown back exposed as his T-shirt rides up. She keeps her gaze trained on Emma’s door as she draws level with the pew. Suddenly, with a deft jump, he’s down again, next to her. His hands are carefully cupped.

‘Look.’

He opens them up tentatively, like a book he doesn’t want you to read. Sheltered in the cup of his palm is a little gecko. It limbers up on its front legs as though trying to get a proper look at her.

‘He likes you.’

The space behind the creature’s front leg is pulsing wildly.

‘It’s terrified,’ she says. He closes his hand around it and half turns his body away, as though the creature were a toy, and she might snatch it away.

‘No – he just senses your fear,’ he says. ‘He’s responding to your pulse. Once you slow down, he will too.’

They stand there like that for a while, understanding everything; saying nothing. She doesn’t flinch when his big toe presses down lightly on her foot. Encouraged, he moves across to stroke the roof of her instep. She drops her chin to watch his beautiful brown toe move round to probe the hollow of her ankle.

He ducks his face down to meet hers, and still holding the creature, he tips her chin up with the tip of his thumb and moves his lips towards hers. She closes her eyes for one second, willing it to happen, before turning sharply away and stretching her neck so she’s looking right through him into Emma’s room. The door is open.

‘No.’

She brings her head back round to face him. His eyes seek hers.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Please.’

She gulps. It hurts.

‘Once,’ she whispers. ‘Then we go back.’ Her breathing is staccato. She swallows hard, fighting to control her pitch and timbre. ‘Yes? We go back to how it was before.’

He nods. She takes a step back, and away from him. He drops to his haunches and releases the lizard onto the balcony. He stays where he is, squatting, staring at the waxed floor.

Jenn steps over to him; stands over him. She loosens the belt, slips her bathrobe open. He lifts his chin, rests his head against her thigh. She is still swollen and he finds her easily enough. Her thighs are trembling slightly and he grips her buttocks to steady her. His tongue is measured and precise.

She is aware of Gregory humming on the other side of the wall, a plug being pulled, and a little way behind her, their daughter making her frustration known.