‘Hello there, Martin. I’m Meg. Now have a seat here whilst I fetch you a tea. I’m told you like it as it comes, no milk, no sugar? She won’t be long. Her helper, Jonjon – he’s with her at the minute. Why don’t you have a seat and read some of those books?’
…Like its predecessor six floors down, Phoebe’s living room made you think of a doctor’s vestibule; in here, though, you would be waiting to see a different kind of doctor, an older doctor, not a Harley Street specialist but an enfeebled GP with a surgery on, say, Cold Blow Lane (one plugging along with his little backlist of patented remedies). Dormer windows, grey carpet, low ceiling…By books Meg meant the waiting-room magazines: a few tousled glossies that had long lost their shine, House and Garden, Country Life…
The day seemed to darken. It was ten past four. Meg entered stage left, placed the mug on a tablemat, and continued across the room; she dipped into an alcove or passageway in the far right corner, and I could hear the squeak of her soles getting softer, then pausing, then getting louder again; she re-entered stage right, and announced with a chastened look,
‘Whew, she’ll be a fair while yet I fancy! Are you all right there, Martin?’ She turned and gazed towards the shadowy chute of the window. ‘Thank heavens for that Jonjon is all I can say. It beats me how he does it.’
I drank the tea, endorsing it with near-continuous infusions of nicotine and water vapour from my e-pen (brandname: Logic).*1 Out on the street Lars had gone on to say, Getting on for forty years? And he looked pained and protective when I told him the year. Oh, Mart, he murmured, that’s half a lifetime away…
Yes, Lars. The summer of 1981. We’d already broken up, and I was more or less engaged to someone else. But then she called me from the airport and she…
The occasion of sin – 2
She called him from the airport and she said,
‘Ah, there you are. It’s me. Listen. Merry and I’ve just got off a plane and we find ourselves in a bit of a predicament. We’re at Gatwick, and we –’
He listened on. The phone was busily telling him some story about door keys, or mortise locks, and how Merry (you know Merry), as forgetful as ever, had left the spare set in the beachbag that they…
‘Meaning’, she summarised, ‘can I come over for an hour? Till this gets sorted out?’
‘Let me think,’ he said. ‘Uh, where did you fly in from?’
‘Corsica. So I’m lovely and brown…Go on, Mart. I won’t disturb you, honest. You can go on working. I’ll take a quick tour of your new place and then I’ll curl up with my Daily Mail and won’t make a sound.’
As he drew in breath to answer he felt again the burden of the advice passed on to him just the night before by that earnest fiancé, C. E. Hitchens: advice about ‘error-likely situations’…But Martin felt he needn’t worry: he was fine, he was safe. Solemnly and gratefully committed to Julia, settled and steadied by the promise of marriage and fatherhood, he had moved beyond the old compulsiveness (no more man-pleasers and man-teasers, no more walking-talking aphrodisiacs, no more illuminati of boudoir and garter belt)…Also to be considered was the fact that Phoebe, a very old friend, was in a bit of a fix (and she was lovely and brown, and there was the – quite harmless – peepshow element, and a temptation was better than nothing at all). So he shrugged and said,
‘An hour? Yeah sure.’ It was all right. He was safe.
Then what you might ask was that strained protuberance doing on his lap? What was that sullen pulse? What was that transmission from his lower heart?
Just an echo, a reverberation. Or so he told himself ninety minutes later as he sauntered down the single flight to let her in.
Martin slid the bolt and pulled the door open – and immediately had to deal with another reflex. He gagged.*2
Copper-coloured Phoebe was wearing white – a sheer summer dress. With her white handbag slung over her shoulder. And kitten-heeled white sandals with thin white bands that curled up around her copper-coloured calves…
‘No suitcase?’ he asked as he kissed her cheek.
‘I parked it at Merry’s. Where I also had a quick bath first.’ She stepped past him. ‘Is it up here?’
‘Let me lead the way,’ he said, suddenly reluctant to follow in her wake. Phoebe, seen from the rear, always reminded him that even the slenderest girls held untold power in their back saddles, patiently ticking over; nor did he want to see all that western light come flooding through her inner thighs, forming a candleflame in her core, as he knew it would, like a wavering question mark…Phoebe said,
‘It’s freestanding and a nice shape.’ She meant the house. ‘What was it before?’
‘A rectory. There’s still some kind of tabernacle across the backyard.’
‘How many flats?’
‘Three. I’m the middle one – here.’
Once inside, she twirled to the doorway of the sitting room, then to the doorway of the study (where the balcony windows were open to the breeze), then to the doorway of the underused kitchen, which had another room off it, with its signs of everyday kitchen life – a kitchen table and a couple of kitchen chairs…
She said, ‘And the bathroom. Which is quite a decent size, I see. Ooh and with a chaise longue no less. And that’s the way to the bedroom? I’ll just take a quick scan of it.’ Which she did, without comment. ‘Mm, if we’d lived here, maybe we wouldn’t’ve broken up. So airy…Right. Back to your desk! I’ll curl up with my paper in there. Oh, are you still single by the way?’
‘Uh, yes, officially. For a little while longer.’
‘So you
