I saw that she thought all of those people I had been talking to and all of those strange events others got themselves involved in had really nothing to do with this bright and pleasant room we were sitting in, nothing seriously to do with the life we might have together. I didn’t think that. This place was connected to those places. Any place she and I went to together would be. I could sit here and enjoy a good meal and love looking at her but I couldn’t make the pleasure erase those other things or somehow discount them. All I wanted to do tonight was to be with her. But I cared very deeply what happened in other places tomorrow. I hoped Marty Bleasdale found Melanie McHarg. I hoped Melanie McHarg would help me. I wanted that Dan Scoular’s death should have honour and that Scott’s death should be understood. If they weren’t, any life Jan and I could have together would be the less.
It seemed to me Jan thought I could live in two stories, the one where these other things happened and the one that she and I would write together. That couldn’t be. I could only live in the one continuous story — different chapters maybe but the one plot, if you had the sense to follow it.
But while our minds were behaving like strangers, our bodies were arranging an assignation. It was happening in spite of ourselves. She touched my leg instinctively below the table in contradiction of what she was saying. I lost the thread of my objections and was left simply enjoying her eyes. As our predetermined sense of ourselves proceeded rather pompously through the evening, together but apart, the desire to make love to each other followed furtively, like a down-and-out who had nothing to commend him but his need. I think we both knew he was bound to confront us.
Perhaps that’s why, after the restaurant, we went into a pub for a drink. We were allowing time for the unadmitted truth of what we felt to catch up. We both became slightly drunk and finished, by no route that I can explain, making our way into the restaurant to get to her flat.
The restaurant was in an alleyway in the West End. Jan’s flat was above it and had a metal work balcony which I liked. The flat had an outside door that you reached by means of a stairway. It could also be entered through a back staircase in the restaurant. Why Jan should decide that we had to go in through the restaurant I do not know. There may have been a logic at the time, now lost forever.
Inside the restaurant, all was pleasantly dim. Light came in from the streetlamps outside, as if filtered through gauze. Each empty table, draped simply in pink cloth, floated like a lotus in a pool. I moved with effortless grace among the tables and barked my shin very painfully on metal. I thought I was going to scream. After a brief, soundless dance, I looked down. I saw an object I had always hated.
It was a large metal flowerpot. It contained a lot of money, mainly coins but with quite a number of notes. It was supposed to be a unique tradition of the restaurant. The idea was that, since everybody who worked here was well enough paid, any tips were put into the flowerpot. Once the amount of money became impressive, it would be given to charity. I didn’t mind the thought so much. But I despised the public, patronising style of it. It was enough to make me worry about Jan. I was exhausted trying to connect with her anyway. The flowerpot palpitated, along with my leg, into a symbol. It blocked my way. This route I may go no further. Jan was still talking, oblivious to my pain.
‘But we’ll have an alcove. Leading through to where the coffee-room is. It’ll be like a room inside a room. Privacy inside privacy. More whispery than the main place.’
‘Hey, Lady of the Manor!’ I called.
She turned towards me. Having thrown her coat off, her body was the only sheer presence in the vagueness of the room. She was looking at me quizzically.
‘I’ve had this,’ I said. ‘For God’s sake, take your pants off and put them round your mouth.’
I was as shocked as she was. But her shock became assurance more quickly. We looked at each other without the mediation of accidental circumstances or deliberate mannerisms and accepted the challenge. It was as if some kind of smoked glass were no longer between us — say, the window of a Daimler had come soundlessly down. She was face to face with the scuffler in the street. She smiled and waited to speak. When she spoke, it was just the one word. The word was a name. She said the word gloatingly, as if she were a spider that had found a species of fly it particularly enjoyed dismembering.
‘Sexist!’ she said softly.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take your pants off and put them round my mouth. Even better. I love the taste of you any way it comes. But let’s just meet.’
She stared at me.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘If you’re that desperate. You know where they are.’
If I hadn’t known, I would have found out. She was standing, still as a startled animal, as if she had caught the sudden whiff of our own nature and knew we were its quarry. I came towards her. I did not touch her. I stood close to her and took her scent. That woman smell, may it always fuse every light in my head and teach me to wait again till my senses glow in the dark.
I reached down very gently. My fingers did not touch her. With both hands, I found the hem of her dress at the outside of each leg. I eased her dress up, very slowly. There being no attack, there was no resistance. As the cloth came above her thighs, it struggled and, in that feeling, the sensuality of her hips seized me more potently than if I had looked or touched. When the dress was crumpled round her waist, I released it and it stayed there.
In the half-dark, the whiteness of her thighs shone above the stocking-tops. Her legs were strong and beautiful. To my awed reverence they might as well have been the pillars to some temple. The white brocaded pants concealed her darkness. I knelt down and softly began to lick the insides of her thighs. I became engrossed, as if I had found my life’s work. She began to moan faintly. The sound grew, part pleasure, part complaint, like an animal that wanted to leave its lair but was afraid to. All the words of the evening had translated into this — a licking tongue, inarticulate noises, the sounds of need. Her legs were trembling and they did not so much part as they thawed open.
I reached up with both hands and pulled her pants down. The pants were pretty but they were an ugliness compared with what they were hiding. As I eased them over her ankles and she stepped out, her legs buckled and she closed on me like a trap I wanted to be caught in.
On the floor we stripped each other with an urgency that precluded the need for technique. It happened that we became naked. The rest took place beyond much that we could do about it. Such lust doesn’t submit suggestions to a committee to be ratified. It descends like a visiting divinity out of the machine and says, ‘You’ll do this and this and this. And then you’ll do that.’ We did. We ended with Jan sprawled naked across one of the tables, her hands grasping its edges, her buttocks hoisted in the air, and me serving her manically from the back. The idea of making love on the table in La Bona Sospira had, unintentionally, managed to fulfil itself. We had found a way past our pretences to ourselves. Pleased to meet us. The smart detective was a gasping, obedient servant of his phallus. The suave business-woman was an abandonment of beautiful, welcoming flesh. Oh, the lies we tell in the daylight about what we are in the dark. We came finally together with a terrible shuddering I thought I might not survive. The force of the moment shook me like a rat. I felt the strength of her loins would pull me outside in.
I fell across her. We lay. I lipped her back, like someone trying to convince himself he is still alive. ‘Oh, darling, oh,’ Jan said. She didn’t move. She lay spread-eagled, as if she had been fused to the table. It was a while before either of us said anything else. We had to wait for the intensity of what had happened to leave. Somehow, it didn’t seem right to speak in its presence. It was Jan who spoke again, reintroducing us to practicality.