Mrs Drudge came in with a plate of steaming goulash, tinned peas, fried eggs, white toast and a pint of black coffee as weak as licorice water. ‘Here comes old grumble-cunt,’ I said to cheer her up.
She stiffened.
‘Don’t drop that tray, for God’s sake.’
‘You hate women, don’t you?’
‘Not more than most people. At least I’m not one of those Englishmen who holds his breath when he walks by a woman. I suppose that’s the only sort you could really love.’
She drew a deep sigh. It was like water coming up from the deepest well in the desert. If there was one thing I admired it was breeding. I still do. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, Gilbert, but do you think there are rats in the building?’
‘I don’t see why there shouldn’t be,’ I said. ‘There seems to be just about everything else. Anyway, you’d be looking at one if I weren’t so bald.’
‘Seriously, I heard a scratching above my head while I was in the kitchen. Maybe the pigeons have broken in again.’
I scooped up the food with relish, which may not have been good, but it was all I had. ‘If I never wonder why you’re so good to me it’s only because I realise how rotten I am to you.’ She flushed, whether with pleasure or pain I did not know. I was the only person in the world who could get either — or both — reactions out of her, and whatever it was, she felt more alive at such times, I swear, than when she was on her own or with other people. And when she had a reaction of any sort I felt waves of lechery rising in me, and having gobbled two-thirds of her execrable meal I put my arms around her fairly broad arse.
She made an effort to move away. ‘Leave me alone, you beast.’
I set the plate down for Dismal to lick. ‘You know I love you. The only true words I ever speak are those plain unadorned ones which describe my undying love for you.’
‘You make it hard for me to believe.’
‘Will you type out this bit of my Moggerhanger book? Jenny Potash won’t be back from Benidorm till next week.’
‘Perhaps I’ll do it later — if you promise to mend your ways.’
I put my arms around her, her magnificent breasts against my waistcoat, my lips at her cheek as she turned her head away. ‘You’re not too old to be a mother,’ I spooned. ‘Don’t you want a baby, before it’s too late? Imagine having a son to support you in your declining years, a big handsome chinless wonder weeping salt tears over his O levels? Surely, my lovely one, you must have thought of it, and if so, I would feel honoured if you’d choose me for the supreme sacrifice.’
I eased the zip from the nape of her warm neck to the valley of her ample bum. Two fingers unhooked her brassiere and my hands closed in front over her hot breasts. From early on I knew one had to be deft with hooks and eyes, and in my youth I had practised for days on a seamstress’s dummy to make sure, drunk or sober, I had it off pat.
The muscles of her broad posterior relaxed as her perfume and make-up gassed me into further eloquence. ‘Think of a little baby,’ I muttered into her ear, pulling her dress forward and her brassiere off. ‘All yours to bring up and turn into yourself with a man’s face. You’d be the proudest mother by the sandpit, or pushing the perambulator through the park with the most cooing, laughing, puking, shitting little lovely kid you could ever have imagined. But if he picks up a pen, chop his head off.’
‘Gilbert,’ she exclaimed, ‘it’s not right to talk like that.’
‘Just his hand, then.’
‘You’re too ghastly.’
‘I know, but all the same, I mean it when I say it would be an honour for me to be the father of your child. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, or shall ever love anyone, in my life. We’re so much made for each other that it pains me to be near you. Unless I fuck you I’m burning in the fires of hell. Surely you must understand that, from your cave of ice?’
‘I don’t want you,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want you.’
I put the three middle fingers of her left hand into my mouth, and laid her right hand against my erection, then put both hands down her bloomers, and found her burning like the inside of a compost heap.
Her protestations of ‘Never! Never!’ were belied by the state in which I found her. I knew her from of old. She had never wanted me. She always objected, right to the end. Even on this occasion she allowed herself — readily enough — to be piloted into the bedroom, as if I had just cut in on an excuse-me quickstep and we were going towards the refreshment table. I kicked the door in Dismal’s face, who had followed us across the living room as if he wanted to be in on the nuptial roundabout.
‘I shan’t thank you for it.’ She lay back, and lifted so that I could draw her bloomers off. ‘I shan’t thank you for it.’ Though she didn’t let go of that icy grip on her soul, she was let go of by a demon that was even more deeply in her, and up went her head and china-blue eyes and flickering lashes as she was taken out of herself sufficiently to stop her nagging that she wouldn’t enjoy it or thank me for it if she did. Did she think I cared whether she enjoyed it or not, as long as I enjoyed it myself? She would certainly not enjoy it if I wanted her to enjoy it, so at least this way there was a chance that she would. I did want her to, though, I certainly did. The lid went off, and as I pumped in for the finals all I saw were her lovely breasts and her gorgeous swan neck, hearing her moans increasing in volume as if the breath was being pulled out of her, while near the end, when her legs would have floated across different continents if she had opened them any wider, the lid went off me as well with such a kettle of steam I thought it would never come back even if I sent a twelve month search party to look for it among my scattered entrails. And, after all, she did thank me for it. And I thanked her as well, which, under the circumstances, was the least I could do.
‘I shall never forgive you.’ She turned away to fasten her suspenders. ‘Never.’