The Things That Make Me Give In (14 page)

‘Now she’s his? He’s a fickle sort, isn’t he?’

‘Only as fickle as you want him to be, Nurse Thompson.’

I shrug around inside my clothes, on hearing that. He usually calls me by my first name.

‘Go on, then. I’ll put up with your fickle hero and your plot devices.’

‘You’re very gracious. Where was I? Oh, yeah – the letter. The letter was so shocking, so salacious, so passionate, that it made our lady – Ginevra – sit down suddenly enough to raise dust clouds from the ancient chaise longue in the parlour. Now it was certain – he was mad for her. No one had ever been mad for her – something that he knew.

‘Still, he could not have predicted her reaction. Her reaction was more daring and more exciting than anything he could have imagined: she began to gamble everything, for too easily caught stolen moments with him.

‘When he knelt to polish her shoe before an outing and everyone’s backs were turned, she would rub the satiny burr of her stockinged inner thigh against his cheek. When he held the door open for people to enter the parlour, she would close it before she was meant to go through, and kiss him with just a layer of lacquered wood between them and everyone.

‘She would call out in a high voice, “Oh, butler! Take this away, would you.” And when he took whatever it was away, she took the time to touch him slyly, in places that should never seem so sensitive. Just below the cuff of his shirt, above his collar and below his hairline where the skin of his neck lay revealed. The dimple in his chin.’

Joe has a dimple in
his
chin. I could reach over and touch it right now.

‘It was at once rapturous, and torment. He became sensible of his own limits – soon they would be reached. And just when he thought that the whole thing had become unbearable, that he had to go back to the safe charms of his maid, that he couldn’t countenance this a moment longer, she said words to him he thought he might have lived to a thousand to hear: “I can’t stand it any longer, I can’t bear this torment. I don’t care who you are or what anyone will think or say. Make love to me, darling, make love to me.”

‘She led him down to the lake in the dead of night to say such things to him, and after they were spoken he became aware of where they were. Somewhere alone, far from everything. And yet he was also aware that he could not just take her. He ached in body and soul, but was sure she hardly knew what she asked.

‘He hardly knew her at all. He hadn’t guessed that her teasing had plagued her as much as it had him. And yet it had. She was feverish, shaking for him. When she forced his hand between her legs, he found her slick and ready. No undergarments stood in his way, and her swollen pouting sex jumped and shivered beneath his touch.

‘He parted her soft lips with one finger, just to feel her heat. To be close to her in that one way he was forbidden to, because of course she could whisper to him words of love, words about herself and her secret dreams. She could write letters and express her deepest heart’s desire. But she could not, they could not . . . they couldn’t make love.’

He sighs, and seems to drift back a little into his mound of pillows. His face is suddenly pale again, and drawn. I put my hand over one of his, thick as it is with tubes and wires, and I feel something shift inside me when he turns his hand and pinches a few fingers around mine. It’s a little thing, really, this shift. It feels as though someone runs a hand down through my insides and just moves things, ever so slightly.

I think I’m really indulging him too much now. It’s never a good idea to get so . . .

I focus on the story instead. But, when I ask, it almost feels as though I’m saying, ‘Are you OK? I want you to be OK.’

‘Why couldn’t they?’ I ask, and his face grows all these lines. They look rueful, but I think there’s pain there, too.

‘Because they couldn’t marry. They weren’t married.’

‘It was the 1930s. Not the dark ages.’

‘Her family would have disowned her.’

‘If they were caught.’

‘They would have been caught eventually.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says me. It’s my story.’

‘Bull.’

‘Does love always find a way, Edie?’ he asks. I’m glad he’s back to my first name.

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant . . . I don’t know! Just fuck it – give it a happy ending!’

But then his face really does crease with pain, and the heart monitor makes that awful sound, and I become a nurse again.

I’m going to have to stop going to him to hear his stories. People are starting to talk. I’m not being professional. This isn’t
Grey’s Anatomy
, for fuck’s sake.

And yet I lie awake at night, thinking about him talking in that strange, soft almost-monotone. It’s quite a girlish voice for such a big man. And he still looks big, even in his tomblike
hospital bed. Even after they’ve stabilised him and he’s laid like death with his eyes closed, paler and fainter than ever.

Six foot three, I guess. Though I’ve never asked him. I’ve never asked him anything about his life – not because I don’t want to know, but because he seemed reluctant to talk about it. He wasn’t a novelist or anything, though, I know that much. He used to be a cubicle jockey, writing reports on nothing for a faceless corporation.

But he’s asked me about my life. About my hobbies, my dreams, where I went for dinner the night before. Whom I went with – which is always no one. I remember his response to that in particular. He expressed surprise that I went out to dinner alone.

And I told him of course. Of course I do. Why shouldn’t you experience the small pleasures of life just because you’re a party of one? And then he said, ‘I shouldn’t have minded being a party of one so much, back when I could still do things like that, if I wanted to.’

I never asked him why he was a party of one, though I wanted to. Even in this weak state he is lovely. I like his mouth, and the way it curls up in the middle. I like his eyes, and the way they take on all of the inflections and dips and climbs that his voice never does.

‘You must have had a girlfriend,’ I said to him, and he smiled his faint smile.

‘I had girlfriends,’ he told me. ‘I had them – I just never fell in love with any of them.’

When he wakes up, he asks for me. I can’t not go. I’m still his nurse despite the knowing eyes and all this messy unprofessionalism.

So I do, and he says immediately, forcefully, ‘Sit down. I’ve got a new story for you.’

I think his tone means: ‘My time is getting short.’ But maybe that’s just me being as melodramatic as his stories. They’re
making me soft-headed. They’re making me weak in the knees. I think about his finger trailing through her soft wetness, and see her head go back. I hear her sigh of pleasure that will now never be fulfilled.

It sounds like the sigh I made last night, with my hand between my thighs.

‘Lean in close,’ he says, and I glance behind me at the closed door. But I do it anyway.

And he whispers in my ear, plain and soft, ‘Once, there was a girl.

‘Once, there was a girl. And of all the people in the land, she was loved the most. She was loved deeply, and to the depth and breadth of anything you can think of. She was loved more than girls prettier, and better than girls neater. She was loved ahead of seamstresses and queens and great ladies.

‘Though he never told her so. He did not dare tell her so. She was the handmaiden of the Sultan, and it was forbidden for him to ever touch her or look on her face. And he knew that, even if it were not forbidden, he would never dare tell her. He could not tell her.

‘She took away his words with her eyes. She stole his breath with one turn of her head. Each time he bowed before the great Sultan, he bowed before her.’

Of course I interrupt him here. ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ I tell him. ‘You’ve said that he could not look on her face, and yet she takes his words with her eyes.’

He laughs, and the laugh turns into a cough.

‘Nothing gets by you, huh?’ he says. ‘Give me a break, I’m dying.’

I swipe at his arm. Even if he’s right.

‘OK, so where was I? How about – over time, the lovelorn hero began to suspect that the handmaiden returned his affection. Of course, this knowledge only came by painstaking increments, in the slightest of head turns and near touches as they passed in hallways. But to ones such as them, a breath in
the direction of the other was as much as a kiss; a lingering look had the force of a caress on bare skin; beneath every word they spoke to one another, other words stirred.

‘“Yes, my lady” meant: “I love you”. “I thank you for your attendance” meant: “I am only myself when I am with you.”

‘And slowly, slowly, each glance and almost-touch and simple phrase began to mean more. Their passion grew, and so did their constrained inner lives, until “Yes, my lady” became words whispered amidst the rubble of all the fierce lovemaking they were not having.

‘Both would lie awake at night, both on narrow and lonely beds – for the Sultan only called on her when it suited him, and it rarely did – and kiss their own hands, and imagine panted breaths hot against their lonely faces, words mingled in between. Words like: “Could you pass me the salt, please?”’

Of course I laugh. But I think I might only be laughing because I’m turned on. I don’t want to admit it, but I am. I think it’s just the way he tells the story – I mean, it’s not as though it’s really graphic, or anything. But it’s waking me up inside, anyway. He’s leaning forward. His eyes are shining.

I want to take his hand again, but I don’t dare.

‘And then it happened.’

Oh, God, oh, God, what? This is worse than the butler story. It seems like the culmination of the other stories, somehow, but I don’t understand why.

I think it’s his tone.

‘He was chosen to prepare her. Of course, both knew the agony that would mean. It was almost as though the Sultan knew, and was using this to punish them. For what man could endure touching the woman he loved, before sending her away to make love to another man, leaving them both unfulfilled?

‘And it was greater torture than he could ever have imagined. He was forced to stand before her, trembling but feigning indifference, as her serving girls looked on and she . . .’

He pauses, and takes a sip of juice. It feels like an age.

‘. . . she peeled off each item of her diaphanous clothing, one by one. All too soon, she stood naked before him – the sight he had pictured so many times, and longed to behold with his real eyes.

‘She did not look as he had imagined. She was paler, plumper. He wanted to fall at her feet.

‘And it just so happened that he was permitted to. Though he hardly knew if that was better or worse. He knelt at her feet and tried not to look at her, to stop wanting to look at her, but he knew that if he didn’t he would never again know her in this way.

‘He knew her mind, he knew her thoughts, he was fluent in all the real meanings behind her every word. But he did not know her body. He wanted the memory of her skin to always be behind his eyes and on his fingertips, even if it would be torment later, when the Sultan took his place in her bed.

‘She passed him oil, and he began at her toes. Big toe too big, little toe too little, skin as soft as the silk that barely covered his shoulders. All things stirred against him with a strength he didn’t want to fight, and before he knew where the time had gone his hands were at her knees. Her perfect knees, her perfect thighs. Her thighs like arrows, plump arrows, and he so close to being between them.

‘He knew she felt this closeness, too. His only relief from the agony of all this warmth and perfume and skin was the knowledge that she agonised too. Her flesh fired as his did, a flame lit low in her groin as it did in his, and when she trembled finally beneath his touch, he couldn’t stop his eyes closing.

‘If the serving girls noticed anything, they said nothing. They were so silent that he could almost believe they would stay that way should other things happen. His mouth was level with the dark V at the top of the arrows, and had been for some time. If he leant forward, would they protest?

‘He wanted to hear their screams, because their screams would mean he was kissing her sex.

‘But instead he swept his slippery hands up and up, over the fullness of her hips. The backs of her thighs, swelling so soft into her bottom – the bottom he had seen sway a million times beneath layers of drifting material.

‘He wanted to squeeze. He wanted to grasp and be greedy, but it was time to stand. To oil her belly and her breasts. Her navel, jewel-less, waiting for him to press his thumb right . . . there.

‘When he stood, she did not seem to fear looking into his eyes. She didn’t fear it so much that he was sure he had somehow stolen her share of the terror. Her gaze made him afraid of himself. At any moment it would challenge him to do something he shouldn’t – lift her into his arms, take her to his quarters, lay her down and . . .’

I’m so intent on him that I hardly realise he’s stopped. He takes another teasing drink of juice.

‘And . . . what?’

He tilts his head at me.

‘Oh, come on.
You
know.’

‘Fuck her till she begged for mercy.’

‘Very poetic.’

‘Yeah, well, all of your poetry is getting in the way of the fucking.’

He laughs.

‘They can’t fuck. It’s forbidden.’

‘Oh, it’s always forbidden.’

‘Do you want to hear the rest of this tale about them not fucking?’

I lace my arms over my chest – nipples hard beneath my top, of course – and cross my legs – a further tight pressure over the pressure that’s twisting between – and wait for him to continue. So patient, very patient – that’s me.

‘It was at that moment that the Sultan burst into the room.

‘Of course he knew he should have been thankful that the Sultan burst in at just that time and no other, but instead all
he could think was:
I almost kissed her. I was inches away from kissing her
.

‘And a deep sadness filled him.

‘Though the sadness hardly had time to last. The Sultan announced in a fury that his handmaiden’s services would not be required that night, and both were dismissed. In a second, it seemed, the serving girls had streamed from the room, and there stood the handmaiden and her love, alone.