Helena Read online

  But you didn't judge, never, not I suppose until the very end, not even my Christianity. Where others found it so easy to mock, especially somebody who had the intellectual credentials that you had, you were generous, neither snide nor dismissive. And you were always such a good listener. I have met so few people who were as genuinely interested in the world as you were, you showed concern for the smallest of details.

  Then suddenly, glancing down at the clock by the side of the bed, I realized how late it was; early afternoon had suddenly become dusk. I knew that I couldn't stay any longer. It was not panic exactly, but something inside me told me that I needed to leave you, Freddie, if I wanted to really understand what had happened to me that afternoon: I needed distance to be able to see us with more clarity, to understand.

  You casually lay on the bed and watched me as I gathered my clothes together, a beatific smile crossing your face, so gentle, so angelic you looked as I dressed before you.

  "Can I see you again, Helena?"

  Suddenly I thought about my life, my real life, the shopping that I was supposed to do, Gregory arriving home finding me not there, worrying about me, fretting, calling friends. I thought about the argument that we had had the previous night, so remote from me now. I thought about the little flat we lived in, the housework I hadn't done, the meeting that I hadn't attended at the school. The afternoon had been so wonderful. You were like some fantasy figure from an erotic dream, unreal, detached from the prosaic.

  "I don't know, Freddie. I really don't know."

  You didn't seem upset, nor did you plead with me or tell me that you had fallen madly in love with me. I have to confess I was a little disconcerted by your nonchalance.

  "You know where I am," you said, and getting up from the bed reached over to your jacket and pulled out a little card with your name and telephone number on. Then you stood beside me, you totally naked, me fully dressed, and kissed me. "Oh, I do hope so, Helena, I really hope so."

  You saw me to the door. Outside on the street I saw you looking down at me, smiling, before I turned my head and walked to the tube station.

  Only I couldn't bring myself to go home. I didn't know at that stage what you meant to me, nor what I might mean to you. I needed to think about what had happened, before I faced Gregory. I knew I would have to lie to him and I hated lying to Gregory because I was no damn good at it apart from anything else.

  I walked along Shaftesbury Avenue, the street thronged with tourists and theatre goers. I glanced at myself in shop windows, tried to see if there was any discernible change in my appearance, anything that would make Gregory suspect, although I doubted that he would ever conceive of me being chatted up in an art gallery and going back to a stranger's flat for afternoon sex.

  I wondered if that was all that in truth had happened, that I had been picked up, fucked and had now been discarded; after all, Freddie, you never asked for my telephone number. What was I to think? What did I want to think? Through my confused mind flitted images of our lovemaking. I could still taste you on my lips, still feel the pressure of your hands on my body, still smell your warm breath, your skin, your voice echoed in my head.

  I hadn't fallen in love with you, at least not in that romantic conventional way. You had disturbed me, frightened me, hurricaned into my life. I didn't know what to think. I was dazed, bewildered, and yes, traumatized.

  Chapter 4

  When I got home, Gregory wore a concerned look on his face. I told him that I had taken the day off from work and I'd visited an old friend. I think he must have thought I had done it all to spite him, which wasn't totally true. In his genuinely forgiving manner, Gregory was full of apologies. He had been unkind and inconsiderate, to not at least talk to me before deciding on the Nairobi trip. It was important that he go, but he could find somebody else.

  For the first time in my life I felt pity for him. I looked at his green eyes and they seemed to contain so much sadness. We had vowed to share our lives together yet there was a part of mine that I knew I could never share with him, a part that would always be hidden from him.

  His face looked sad, and his kind voice expressed concern. Could I forgive him for being the selfish prig that he was? I began to cry. What else could I do, Freddie? What else!

  He embraced me, held me in his arms. Of course I forgave him and it was me who should apologize.

  "What for?" he asked puzzled by my violent apology. Of course you know what I should have apologized for, Freddie, for deception, betrayal, for doing the one thing that I knew would break his heart, but I couldn't. I couldn't mention all that. For being so selfish, for me being so bloody selfish! He clasped me to him more tightly. Don't worry, don't worry."

  So my guilt effected this great reconciliation between us, the greatest pyrrhic victory of our relationship, both of us vowing to try harder, to mend whatever there was that was broken between us.

  When we were in bed, he tried in his usual way to make love to me, reaching his arm over to me, and stroking the side of my face. I couldn't do it. I couldn't let my own husband make love to me; I couldn't let him touch me where you had touched me that day. It seemed somehow sacrilegious. I told him that I was too tired. He nodded understandingly. Another wave of guilt swept over me, as I realized that Gregory could never reach that part of me that you had reached, that my lovemaking with him had been what it always was, and what I had never really faced up to until that moment - symptomatic of my whole constricted and duty bound life - a lie, a deceit.

  Of course, I couldn't sleep. I stood by the window smoking, looking out at the night sky. A light snow was falling gently under the neon amber light. For the second time in my life I was looking into the abyss, my life once again chaosed, disordered, terrifying. The difference this time, for all that I hoped the contrary, was that I think I knew even then, Freddie, that I had crossed the boundary with you and that there was no going back, ever.

  I woke up at six as usual, showered, breakfasted, went to work, did my job, made apologies for my absence, but all the time in a daze, trying not to think the inevitable: what the true consequences had to be of what had happened the previous day.

  As each hour passed by, I thought back to what had happened at the same time the previous day. I could not get you out of my mind. Sometimes I would clench my hand into a fist as I recalled you, your body, your kisses, your hot tongue on me, your hot cock in my mouth.

  As could be expected, my sensible-shoed self tried to play it all down, to belittle the magnitude of the event. I had to give myself a good talking to! How could I throw away everything that I had achieved over such a long period of time? How could I treat Gregory so badly? If only I waited, the whole thing would gradually recede in my memory as my night with the three rough boys had done. Nothing had happened, I tried to tell myself, that was really decisive.

  So the days passed. Gregory was kindness personified and I could easily reciprocate. I threw myself into my work. I bothered myself with books and chores, hoping that the painful temptation would go away, the painful temptation of you, Freddie. But sometimes I would take out your card and stare at your name and telephone number. When Gregory was out I would sit in the armchair nearest the telephone, my hand tapping the table it rested on; once I even picked it up and dialled the first digits of your number before replacing the phone.

  Freddie, it was torture. I went further, much further. I walked around the gallery again, illogically sat for half an hour gazing at Leonardo's cartoon, hoping that you would come to sit beside me. I walked up to Soho, took a meal in the restaurant opposite your flat and gazed up at the half closed blinds, but you weren't there, my heart pounding, my blood racing through me, unable to eat, my hands shaking.

  Let me be clear about this: however loveable you were, I hadn't fallen in love with you. That would be too simple, too pat. In truth, a large part of me still loved Gregory. I did not want a domestic life with you, even one that was full of your delicious love- making. I wanted excitement, sexual
excitement. I wanted to explore, to conquer, to discover all those pleasures that until recently I had only sadly dreamed about from the comfort and the secrecy of the bathroom. This was the attraction.

  I thought that this is what you had wanted to. When I had been lying with you in your bed after we had made love, I asked if you had a wife or a girlfriend.

  "No, Helena, I don't think that is me." You looked down at me and kissed me. "I am too curious and I still have too much learning to do, too much exploring. I have lots of close friends, but I'm honest with them. I tell them the truth. It's better; it lowers expectations."

  "But don't you miss intimacy, I mean with one person?"

  "I have lots of intimacies, but I'm so easily tempted. It would take a special person to accept me, a very special person indeed." You lowered your eyes down to me again and stroked the side of my face.

  Fleetingly, the thought crossed my mind that I could be that person. I could accept you having an alternative erotic life, as you might be able to accept me having one. Maybe you were thinking the same thing, hence your qualification. I've seen people try to live like that, but it never seems to work, openness always seems to tempt the allure of the secretive, the clandestine, sexual magnanimity fades into petty jealousy. I construct my life on the principle of my freedom and independence. I do not believe that I could live any other way.

  Freddie, you were always able to state things with such clarity, such precision, so forcefully that I saw your unquestionable logic. But I'm not as strong as you, contrary to what you thought, I didn't know whether I could live like that for always, not then. The battle between lonely but exciting exploration and the cosiness of conformity, I thought, would always reside. I did not count my drunken night as a great sexual experience. You, Freddie, were that, my first real venture into the dark of my sexual being, but I was so tempted by you, by the multifarious carnal possibilities that you seemed to offer.

  What I'm saying is that you eroticised me. I could not walk down a street without thinking about you, and thinking about you was the equivalent of thinking about sex. In a supermarket queue, I wondered what the pram-pushing father in front of me would be like in bed, how thick his cock would be; I studied the face, the hands, and the gestures of my splenetic boss in some dull meeting and imagined his head burrowing between my legs.

  I had of course thought of these things before, used such images to fuel my fantasies, but before you, Freddie, that's all they were - fantasies. You made them real possibilities.

  I knew that a word or a gesture at the checkout could bring a man to my bed, a casual invitation might tempt my boss. The ease with which you had me, Freddie, made everything seem so possible, not a mere chimera to help satisfy my lust, but a plausible reality; sex was only a word away, a gesture, a smile. All it took was my willingness. This had not been the case before. It made my body tremble!

  You also made me look at the way I dressed, the way I presented myself to the world. I would look at my reflection in the mirror and think how unbelievably frumpy I was, how all my clothes seemed to be designed to hide the allure of my body, the baggy sweaters loose around my curvaceous breasts, the long skirts and wide trousers covering my slender legs. My whole sartorial style seemed a battle against the possibility of my revealing of my sexual identity.

  I would stare into shop windows, look at skimpy skirts, revealing black numbers, in lingerie departments I would imagine my legs encased in silk stockings, satin panties.

  I saw how unsexy my bobbed hair was, at least on me, cutting off my silken waves to hide everything that showed a trace of my sexuality.

  But there was always that little girl about me, struggling to behave myself, shocked by the attention I paid to silk or lace, to the sexual excitement I felt in the proximity of men, and sometimes women. It propelled me to try to forget you, to force you away, but the memory of you, of that afternoon relentlessly pursued me, debilitated my best intentions, warped all my logical thought processes until I could stand it no longer.

  That is why you found me that Saturday afternoon, standing outside your door, having left Gregory at home marking essays. If only I could touch you again for an hour, to feel your hands on me, to touch you, smell you, see you. The addict always convinces himself that the next fix is the last one, and once he has achieved his last hit he can give up for good.

  This was my mental state. I would give you up. I had to give you up, for my sake, for Gregory's sake, for the sake of my life and my sanity, but just one more time, to have you again, before I renounced you forever.

  I had dressed as provocatively as my wardrobe had allowed, in stockings, although they were woollen and barely covered my knee, in a shrunken sweater that pushed out my breasts through the wool. I had applied a little make-up, a light brush of rouge on the cheeks, a faint trace of mascara to delineate the shape of my eyes. My god I must still have looked pretty prim, not exactly like the tarts I had seen standing in strip club doorways in their short leather skirts and diaphanous blouses.

  Your hand reached out to me and you gently hauled me inside the door. As soon as you had banged it closed behind us I fell on you, feeling the urgency of our mutual passion. This, as you knew, was no time for savouring, no leisurely bout of lovemaking.

  You threaded your arms through mine, pushing out the sides of my opened raincoat, and grabbing me to you, pressed my pliant flesh against the firmness of your chest.

  I cannot describe the liberating thrill I felt at that moment as you clutched me to you, emancipating me in your grip. Your hands snaked down to my back and then my buttocks, grabbing me in your hand, lifting me off the floor. Our mouths met in the most prolonged and voluptuous kiss. Then you bent down, sneaking your hand between my thighs, inside my panties so you could feel the burning reality of my naked flesh. You dug your nails into the skin, scratching me, nipping me in your overwhelming passion, your fingers sliding to the wet folds of my engorged lips, pressing down on my vulva, finding the sweet opening of my sex. Your mouth all the time nibbling my lip, biting me as my hands clasped your round shoulders.

  No words, no offers of wine, no kindness, no time. The urgency of your need of me, from this I trace the submission to my need; from this moment of grasping and clenching I knew I had never let the sexual excitement go, that my sexual life with Gregory would always be too tepid for my hot lust.

  Before I knew it, you had whipped my panties off, tearing the cotton down my skin, your nails leaving a faint scratch mark on my inner thigh and then your hand returning to frantically stroke the hard button of my clitoris.

  It was arousing me, but it wasn't enough: I wanted your cock inside me. I knelt at your feet, unzipped you, and pulled out your hard thick rock, and roughly pulling down the sheath of your dome, I sank the hot meat into my mouth, gobbling on you as frantically as I could, with an almost violent passion.

  But this wasn't enough for you either. You pulled off my raincoat, pulled my sweater above the bulge of my breasts, exposing the firm hard nipples to your gaze, before lifting me up by my haunches and impaling me on your thick, long cock. Lifting me up and down on you, your tongue deftly snaked down the half cups of my bra, so first your lips and then your teeth could pluck on my throbbing teats, pulling on them roughly as I slid on your shaft, up and down. The light tingling pain in my breasts fused with the denser, inexorable satiation your hard cock brought to me.

  I squirmed my pleasure above, your hands thrusting my hips down on you, each stroke seemingly deeper, more urgent, more ardent than the last. This was the antithesis of Gregory's bland though tender efforts: this was consummation, an intense burning into one another. My orgasm did not start slowly, but was like a hammer blow stinging my consciousness, dulling everything else. It galloped through me, an irresistible crushing force locking every muscle of my body in its wake, pushing through every ounce of my flesh, seeking release in the mighty shriek of elation I let out as you spurted your seed inside the silky flesh of my sex.

  As y
ou held me in the aftermath of our lovemaking, clasping me to you, my naked breasts rubbing against the linen of your shirt, your cock still wedged inside me, I felt engulfed by a delicate melancholy, my eyes moistening at the thought of the rough sweetness of my pleasure. I never knew. I never knew.

  Returning to Gregory, the smell of you still on me, your seed inside, I knew where all this had to lead. It had been the most clarifying fuck of my life. It made it all seem so clear. I knew that I could no longer stay with him, that I had now irrevocably taken the first stride on the less traveled road of sexual exploration and that the first and the biggest victim, the man tossed away on the side, was Gregory.

  I needed time to think though. I knew the inevitability of extricating myself from the relationship, but what I didn't know was the how. You see I still cared for him. Until you, he had been the pivotal figure of my life, the man I had invested my dreams in, my future. But beyond that there was also the fact that he was a good, kind man, who I believed deeply loved me. It would have been too callous to just go back and tell him everything, tell him that I was leaving him not for another man, but because he could not fulfil either my sexual need or curiosity. How would he have taken it? He wouldn't have understood. For all of his perceptive theological insights, it was beyond his knowledge. He would have been bewildered, distraught.

  I needed to plan, to think, to let him down as gently as I could. In a week he was going away to Africa. Unbearable though it was to wait so long, I would steel myself until his absence. I would have time to choose my words carefully, to protect him from my true nature.