My Fair Man. Jane Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ meal was finished he sat next to her on one of the sofas in Antonia’s living room, one hand, very casually, slipped behind her. Signalling, she thought, some kind of intent.

      It was going well, Claire decided. He was successful and established – he had one of those lovely little Georgian cottages in that network of streets between Notting Hill Gate and High Street Kensington – and he had been divorced for just about the time a man should be before he considered remarriage.

      At the end of the evening, as the other couples tumbled out into their cars, Claire asked Antonia, within earshot of Chris, for the number of a local cab company. Antonia looked at Chris meaningfully.

      ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said. ‘It’s not far out of my way.’

      She smiled, thanked him, and nipped into the loo on her way out to retouch her lipstick and check that she looked OK. In the car they talked a bit about the other guests and when he drew up outside her mews house he stopped the car and turned off the ignition (another sign of intent, she thought).

      ‘Can I come in?’ he asked.

      She remembered Hattie’s advice, earlier that evening, about taking it slowly. But Claire had reached an age – and if she were honest a state of desperation about ever finding a man she could really love – when caution was pointless. If she said ‘no’ she would probably never hear from him again. And if she said (as she probably would later) ‘yes, yes, yesss’ she would probably never hear from him again. There was nothing to be gained, and nothing to be lost, in being coy.

      He didn’t waste any time. Within seconds he was passionately kissing her. Telling her, whenever he surfaced to take in a gulp of air, that she was beautiful, hot, wild, the best – the usual gamut of meaningless compliments induced by male sexual arousal.

      She broke off for a second, as she considered only proper, to offer him a drink. She didn’t want him to think that she was inhospitable (which, of course, he didn’t).

      ‘Is there anything you want … wine, brandy …?’

      ‘Just you,’ he said, falling on her again with a ferocity that rather overwhelmed, not to say irritated, her. What was the hurry?

      ‘Well, I’ll just put on some coffee,’ she said, struggling free and rushing into the kitchen, pulling the zip up on the back of her dress as she went so that it didn’t fall off her completely.

      Claire hadn’t lived with anyone since she had broken up with Jon five years ago. In truth she hadn’t really had what you might call a regular partner for three of those five years. There had been a few married men with whom she had enjoyed brief affairs that would involve a couple of weeks of frenzied clandestine sex (what she called her fortnightly men). And there had been two complicated relationships that had – over a period of a couple of months – never quite come to anything.

      For some reason she didn’t seem to meet men in the way she had a few years ago – at parties, through friends, in clubs. Most of her female friends (and she didn’t have many) seemed to be caught up in long-term relationships so there was no one to go clubbing with, and anyway she was so caught up in her work that really, finding time to develop relationships – let alone draw up some strategy on how to meet decent men – was almost impossible. Of late she had got rather used to snatching, as it were, whatever sexual action was on offer. She had a strong, growing feeling that this Chris was not going to be the love of the rest of her life, but what the hell? She wanted sex, even if she wasn’t sure if she wanted him – and that horrid little goatee.

      By the time she got back to the sofa he was so sexually charged that she wasn’t sure there would be time to guide him up the little staircase to her bedroom. If she didn’t hold him back for a minute it would all be over before the espresso machine had finished.

      ‘Chris, Chris …’ she said, pushing him back a little, ‘let’s go upstairs …’

      They part walked, part stumbled, part fucked their way up the stairs.

      ‘Oh GOD!’ he cried within seconds of reaching the bed and fully entering her. ‘Oh GOD!’ he screamed again. And then there was silence apart from the ticking of her bedside clock and the beating of her own disappointed heart. Then they lay there in what she could only describe as postcoital gloom for several minutes.

      ‘Are you going?’ she asked, astonished at the speed with which he had then got out of bed and dressed.

      ‘Yes, I think it’s best,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this. I never meant it to happen …’

      Oh that’s nice, she thought, so what did he think would happen when he asked to come in for a drink and then jumped on me?

      He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands.

      ‘What is your problem, Chris?’ she said.

      ‘Antonia,’ he replied.

      ‘What’s Antonia got to do with this?’

      ‘Everything. We’ve been having an affair for two years. It’s the only way we can get to see each other socially without Steve catching on. If she invites another single woman …’

      ‘How many of her single friends have you fucked in the cause of perpetuating Antonia’s marriage to Steve?’

      ‘Oh, you’re the first,’ he said, looking at her with what he obviously thought she would interpret as sincerity.

      I’ve heard it all now, she thought, ‘Oh, you’re the first.’ She wondered if it weren’t innate in men to come out with that phrase whenever they were caught in an awkward situation with a woman. It seemed to spring to their lips as automatically as a yelp if they were kicked in the balls or, in Chris’s case, the name of the Lord when he reached his sexual climax (if you could call it that).

      But then, she thought, perhaps she had been the first of Antonia’s decoys to fall for the cheap lines Chris had thrown at her. Probably he never thought she would invite him in and when she did some automatic male instinct had taken over. However much in love he was with Antonia he wasn’t actually going to turn down ten minutes (or was it five?) between the sheets with another woman. Men are like dogs, she thought as she watched him shuffling awkwardly beside her bed, that eat every meal regardless of their hunger just in case it’s their last. Chris had approached her like an extra tin of Chum that fortune had thrown his way. And now that he had partaken of her he looked as if he were going to be sick.

      ‘You won’t say anything to Antonia about this …?’ he said hesitantly.

      He had a nerve.

      ‘Perhaps it would be more relevant if I talked to Steve,’ Claire said coolly.

      ‘Oh Christ, no!’ A tone of real desperation entered his voice. ‘He’s my oldest friend.’

      ‘Isn’t he the lucky one?’ Claire turned over in the bed and closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again he would have gone.

      After an hour or so of tortured self-examination she finally fell into a fitful sleep that was punctuated by odd, recurring dreams of Jon in that brief period of her life years ago when she had felt in some way emotionally fulfilled.

      Hattie had no intention of giving up on her mission, even if it took her all night. She spent СКАЧАТЬ