The Man Who Forgot His Wife (26 page)

‘It’s incredible to think that you have no memory of having sex!’ She chuckled as she sat beside me, looking directly into my eyes.

‘Yeah, but you know, I got in the swimming pool and immediately remembered how to swim. And I got on a bike and I remembered that …’

‘Oh, right, so you can still cycle and drive and everything?’

‘Er, well, actually, no. I tried driving. And I demolished my neighbour’s wall—’

Her insane laughter made me realize that she was even drunker than I was.

‘Maybe I should give you a few driving lessons?’ She laughed.

‘Well, no, I think it’s important to have a proper instructor, with dual controls and everything. Oh, I see—’ The rest of my sentence was cut off at source as she kissed me full on the lips.

Her skin smelt quite distinctive: it was how the perfume counter in a department store might smell if it was moved into a pub. Her lips contorted around mine. I could smell hair lacquer. She was either wearing too much of it or had started drinking it when the bar had run out of vodka. ‘Okay, we’re doing this now,’ I thought. ‘I understand that this is one of the required stages along the way.’ I wondered how many women I had kissed like this in my previous life. Gary had given me the impression that I had always been the shy one, that I had dismally failed to match his tally of conquests at university, and that I had not even looked at another woman after I had met Maddy.

Finally I broke off the kiss, ostensibly to have another glug of wine. I had tried my hardest, but had failed to keep Maddy out of my mind. This woman’s body was so completely different from that of the mother of my children. And I knew which I preferred. Madeleine’s body was softer than a man’s; she had curving hips and breasts and tumbling red hair that wasn’t cropped short for sport. And then I did something I did not feel proud of. As Suzanne launched her face at mine once more, I imagined it was Madeleine. I closed my eyes and kissed harder now, and eagerly pulled her close to me. Suzanne let out an approving grunt that I finally seemed to be getting into it, and I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her with passion and meaning, pretending she was the woman I had told myself that I was over.

She put her hand under my shirt and I felt Maddy’s hand tenderly stroking my back. Maddy’s other hand ran through my hair. Her lips were softer now, her skin smelt sweeter. I tried to put Maddy out of my head again. My mission this evening was to lose my virginity; it was a target I had set myself, like running a marathon or climbing a peak. I had to remain focused on my goal,
however
uncomfortable I felt along the way. Despite the accumulating evidence, I still didn’t dare believe it was actually going to happen, and so a thrilling tingle of excitement shuddered through me as each station was reached along the way. When I ran my hand up inside the back of her top and my hand brushed against the mystery mechanics of her bra, she invitingly suggested that I made her ‘more comfortable’.

Undoing a lady’s bra – this was definitely the furthest I had ever been! I was virtually being granted access to her breasts! She wasn’t screaming or turning round and slapping me in the face – she actually wanted me to do it. Her bra-strap had three separate hooks, but one of them seemed to have become caught in a loop of cotton thread from which it refused to be disentangled. I tried to keep kissing her as if there wasn’t an awkward problem going on at the end of my left hand, but there was no denying it once the final sharp jerk at her back actually dislodged her face from mine.

‘Ow! What are you doing?’

‘Sorry! Sorry – one of the little hooks seems to be caught in a bit of material there …’

‘Oh, just give it a tug – doesn’t matter if you rip it.’

I yanked it firmly, but still the thread of cotton was stronger than I was. ‘Hang on a minute, I might be able to see the problem properly if I put my reading glasses on …’

The sexual tension dipped more than a little as I reached for my jacket and took out my glasses case, opened it up and eventually had a good look at this little problem, like an old clockmaker studying the inside of a pocket watch.

‘There! Got the little monkey!’ I finally announced. But I feared that just advancing straight to her breasts now might seem a bit perfunctory, so I just left the strap hanging loose across her back and resumed kissing her again in the hope of building up another head of steam.

I was surprised by how forward she was, effortlessly undoing
my
buttons to rub her hands over my chest. At each stage she was ahead of me. She wriggled out of her top and her bra in one deft movement and then moved to pull my shirt and vest over my head. I could see Suzanne’s breasts now. Even though we hardly knew each other, she seemed to have no qualms about baring the upper half of her body to me. I tentatively went to touch them, like a wartime child who had never seen this particular exotic fruit before and wasn’t sure how you approached it. She wriggled out of her tights and I thought I ought to follow suit by taking off my trousers. ‘But would it look too forward if I took off my underpants as well?’ I thought. ‘I mean, this might be as far as she wants to go – I don’t want to come across as some creepy flasher exposing himself in the school gym store.’

‘Have you brought something?’ she suddenly enquired.

‘Well, I’ve got some wine in my bag, but you already had a bottle, so—’

‘No – a condom. Have you got a condom?’

That was definitely it, then. That surely was confirmation that sexual intercourse really was going to happen.

‘Oh, sorry, yes, I’ve got one in my wallet.’ And I reached across to my discarded trousers to find the little sachet that Gary had bought me a few days earlier. ‘But that doesn’t mean I was automatically expecting, you know …’

‘What?’

‘I wouldn’t want you to think that I presumed you would have sex with me so I put a condom in my wallet—’

‘Who gives a fuck? Quickly, just put it on …’

‘Right, will do.’

I tugged at the foil, and for a few seconds was unable to open the packet. In my urgent desperation I attacked it with my teeth, and I bit the serrated edge of the foil, recoiling as the seal broke and I got a tiny taste of the sterile lubricant inside. Once the thing was in my hands I couldn’t help but think how pathetic it was. ‘All that fuss over this?’ I thought. ‘A wet bit of crumpled
polythene
?’ But my disdain masked a certain amount of fear. I had no idea how to put the thing on. The Year 9 pupils had recently been shown how to put on a condom as part of their health and social care curriculum, but I had thought at the time that it might seem a little strange if I turned up to the lesson to find out myself.

Finally the deed was clumsily done and Suzanne and I were ready for proper intercourse to commence. Suzanne lay back below me and I was ready to make love to her. Actually ‘love’ was far too strong a word. I barely knew her, I quite liked her; I would be ‘making quite like’ to her. The pile of exercise mats had a musty rubber smell, and there was a piece of blackened chewing gum on the top one. And so, with a shift of my body and a clumsy grope to find my way, I became a man again. ‘That Rudyard Kipling poem really should have included something about this bit,’ I thought, as I focused on the achievement, the milestone that
this was it
!

‘Whoa! Whoa! Slow down a bit, Vaughan – it’s not a race to the finish!’

‘Sorry … Is that better?’

‘Nice and gentle – that’s right.’

I felt a huge gratitude to this older woman for showing me the ropes, even if she was about a decade younger than me. But I couldn’t help thinking that this whole business really was remarkably intimate; I barely knew Suzanne, and yet our two naked bodies were now interlocked in a secret room.

I did my best to go slowly, to be considerate and attentive, with occasional tender stimulation of various parts of her body, even if Suzanne had never particularly thought of her elbow as an erogenous zone. I had got into a rhythm now, and felt pretty much in control. Unfortunately my foot seemed to have got tangled in the netting of a folded-up five-a-side goal that was propped against the wall, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. I was actually having sex; this was what it felt like! That foot was not shaking free, however much I tried to wiggle it about. I looked around to
see
that it was completely wrapped up in the netting and I wondered whether I might be able to just leave it there until this was over. While still ostensibly focusing on Suzanne, I gave one final tug and suddenly the whole metal goal frame was pulled from where it was leaning and came crashing to the floor with a deafening clatter.

‘Jesus Christ, what was that?!’ She had leapt up in fear of being crushed by falling metal bars, and I was horrified that she had pulled herself away from me.

‘Sorry! Sorry! The goal net was tangled in my foot. Sorry, did I make you jump?’

‘Do you think the guys will have heard that from the reception desk?’

‘I doubt it. Don’t they normally have the radio on? Shall we just carry on?’

‘Did they have a radio on? I don’t remember them having a radio on.’

‘It didn’t make that much noise,’ I claimed, despite the ringing in my head and the fear that my eardrums might now be bleeding. ‘Shall we just go back to where we left off?’

But the moment had gone. Whereas before her drunkenness had made her adventurous and provocative, now she was excessively paranoid and I was appalled to see her getting dressed.

‘We could get in big trouble,’ she suddenly decided. ‘I have a professional duty to look after this equipment,’ she continued, which seemed a bit rich from someone who had minutes earlier demonstrated her professional duty to the exercise mats by having sex on them.

It was over before it was finished. I had seen an 18 certificate but had left before the end; I had smoked pot but hadn’t inhaled; I had learned to put on a condom, but it hadn’t really been required. Probably best not to save it for another time, I thought, as I shoved it in a tissue inside my jacket pocket. ‘Did this count?’ I wondered. I had had sex with a woman, but there had been no
climax.
Was that enough to admit me into adulthood? Yes, that still definitely counted, I concluded. I had broken my duck, I had lost my second virginity. Now I could look Mick Jagger in the eye.

The two of us got dressed and there was no pretence that we ought to spend the rest of the night together or anything soppy like that. She suggested I should leave first and she would tidy up in her store room and leave ten minutes later, so that the blokes on the door didn’t suspect anything. I gave her a peck on the cheek and thanked her probably too much, and then headed out into the main part of the gym, still feeling like a super-hero. There in the middle of the wooden floor was an abandoned football. I saw the goal at the far end of the room, and I took a short run-up and kicked the ball with all my might, watching it curl with perfection into the corner of the goal. And I raised both arms in the air in triumph. ‘He shoots! Goooooaaaallll!’

I was feeling extremely pleased with myself. I was the cock of the walk, I was the king of the world, I was the Six Million Dollar Man. I was still feeling mightily proud when I said goodnight to Kofi and John, who seemed a little strange towards me, and red around the eyes as if they had been crying or something. Or laughing, perhaps. And I looked up to the small security monitor above the desk, to see a black-and-white image of Suzanne just putting her coat on in the gym store, and then I heard them burst out laughing again as I slunk out of the main door.

Chapter 18

WHEN MADDY WAS
particularly fed up with the inner city, she would occasionally buy a property-porn magazine called
Coastal Living
. It featured sun-bleached seaside cottages where the only item on the kitchen table was some freshly gathered samphire or an artistically positioned shell. Freckly children in stripy T-shirts with sand on their knees ate crusty brown bread grabbed from pale-blue kitchen sideboards.

I wondered if there should be a special lifestyle magazine for where I found myself now?
Vaughan divides his time between his cosy bedroom in Streatham’s Hi Klass Hotel and the en-suite bathroom, where he is cultivating a range of black and green moulds on the non-slip bathmat. ‘I love living in a cheap South London hostel used mainly by prostitutes,’ says Vaughan, 39. ‘From my grubby fourth-floor window I have a perfect view of the huge extractor ducts of the kebab shop opposite.’ Vaughan says that having no cooking or washing facilities helps keep life simple, and he likes to remember the various takeaway meals he has enjoyed by keeping the congealing cartons piled up all around the room
.

In my imagination, the Easter holidays had loomed in the
distance
as a vast tract of unlimited free time during which I would get completely on top of all my marking, lesson plans and personal admin, while also grabbing some quality time with my children and visiting my still hospitalized father. It was not until I emerged from under the cheap hotel bedsheets to glance at my bedside clock on Wednesday afternoon that I accepted I might be letting the opportunity slip by. All my good intentions had presumed a degree of energy and enthusiasm for life that seemed to have been mysteriously drained from me. Both my laptop and mobile phone had run out of battery power long ago. It would have been no effort to plug in their chargers, had my own batteries not been so low as well.

I was no more unshaven on Wednesday than I had been on Tuesday – it seemed as if even my stubble couldn’t be bothered any more. I looked so unhealthy that I decided I ought to eat some vegetables, so I rooted around among the old curry cartons and found the three-day-old polythene bag of shredded lettuce that had come with the chicken tikka masala.

I turned on the television again. I flicked to the 24-hour News Channel, but extra news was still stubbornly refusing to occur to fill the additional allotted time. I watched part of an American daytime show that featured a couple who were divorcing because they’d found out they were brother and sister. At least that was one problem Maddy and I had never had. Well, as far as I knew anyway, though if Jean turned out to be my mother that might just be enough to finish me off.