Helena (13 page)

"You look
well," he said pulling away to look at me. I have never been an
actor and my father could always discern when I was lying or
whether there was something upsetting me. My father was indeed the
reason why I was no good at lying, knowing as I did that however
clever I tried to be he would easily guess the truth, and even a
goody two shoes like me occasionally descends into mendacity.

"I'm great," I
said a little over-emphatically.

"Gregory get
off okay?"

"Yes, last
Thursday." Of course Gregory's departure to them would have seemed
my nemesis had they known what I had done the previous night. It
would be my temporal salvation, knowing that any upset they
perceived in my countenance would be put down to my present
loneliness or my slight disgruntlement that he had gone in the
first place.

"You know it's
important that somebody like him went. They need somebody with an
incisive mind to ask the right questions, to analyze the problems,
not some of those old fuddy-duddy clerics."

Momentarily I
felt melancholic. Why couldn't I have been like them? Why couldn't
I have taken pleasure in the minutiae of life, the flowers in the
garden, the theological disputation, the neat lives of my father's
parishioners? It worked for them. They were happy with their order
and tranquillity, in the cosiness of each other. It could have been
like that with Gregory, the tiny disputes, love shown in kind
detail, a tender mocking word, or just in the sheer silent presence
of the other's company. But no, I couldn't live like that. That was
what all this had been about, what had tortured my sleep, what had
driven me to despair, to near collapse, to the brink of madness. I
liked excitement. I needed to travel human experience, and the
place that I knew I needed to begin in was the unmentionable, at
least unmentionable to my parents, alley of my sexuality.

He took me for
a drink before driving me home to meet my mother for lunch,
thinking himself to be cheekily decadent indulging in a pint of
frothy English beer, not even looking askance as his daughter asked
for a gin and tonic.

"Would Gregory
think about moving back to the country to take a parish?" His
question pained me, predicated as it was on a situation that no
longer existed.

"I don't
really know at the moment. He's a bit caught up with this theology
course he's devising, not to mention all this African stuff. It
takes up a lot of his time." I wondered whether I was saying the
right things, and whether my intonation did not betray the fact
that what Gregory did from now on could be no concern of mine.

"You know I've
been thinking, Helena," he said before taking a gulp of his
beer.

"Yes dad." I
was sure he had some proposition in mind, something that would
bring myself, through Gregory, back to the natural order of the
countryside and away from the danger and decadence of London.

"Well, I'm
coming up to retiring age. I mean not yet, life in the old dog
etcetera, but being an old dog I don't want to prolong my day. I
wondered whether Gregory might like this parish. I know the bishop.
He speaks highly of Gregory, fresh blood and all that. It has to go
through the process but I'm sure all concerned would be
amenable."

So that is
what he wanted, me back in the old family hearth, their little girl
brought back where they thought she belonged.

"But where
would you go?"

"Oh, your
mother has seen a little cottage, Davidson's old place, it's up for
sale now that the old man has past on. With a bit of savings and
our pension we could just about manage it."

It seemed that
he had thought it through. Even three weeks ago it might have been
a serious consideration, but now, not now: that was impossible.

"I'll talk to
him when he gets back," I lied, trying to sound as enthusiastic
about the proposition, hoping, praying, if that isn't such an
inapposite word, that my father would not detect the sad deception
perpetrated behind my optimistic response.

My mother had
prepared a roast in honour of my return. A modern touch, absent
from my childhood, was a bottle of Rioja in the centre of the
table.

"Work's okay,
Helena?" These were the usual questions. There was an undercurrent
of disappointment in the question, because having achieved my first
and for all their Christian humility and belief in charity, I knew
that they both felt I could have done something more 'challenging'
after leaving college. My mother had virtually said as much when I
told her I was going to teacher training college. "But you're so
clever, Helena, you have such a good imagination."

She had no
idea of course, how I was accustomed to employing it.

"Oh you know,
it's busy."

"And Gregory's
well?" It was funny to hear my mother interrogate me again. I had
forgotten this little habit she had, eternal optimist as she was,
of phrasing all her questions in positive statements.

"He was the
last time I saw him."

"You're going
to miss him?" Yes it was a question, or at least framed with the
same intonation, but one which I could not bring myself to
answer.

At night I lay
in my childhood room, barely changed over the long years, the same
pastel shaded walls, the girly pink bedspread, the little oak chest
of drawers, a strip of moonlight casting a square of light on
boarded floor. It all reminded me of not only the girl I was but
also the girl had been destined to become. It would not have been
difficult to trace the trajectory from obedient vicar's daughter to
compliant vicar's wife. I was going against destiny. How I longed
then for it all to be over, my sluttish soul outed for all to
see.

Gazing out
onto the empty sky, I thought about Gregory, conjuring images of
childhood films: a humid office, a fan whirring above, Gregory
among the white-shirted natives, fingers pointing on maps,
analyzing problems, while outside the bustle of street life...

Poor Gregory!
I knew that I would break his heart. He really did deserve someone
better than me, or at least someone more appropriate. This was not
so much self-pity, Freddie, as mere recognition of our sharp
incompatibility. I was doing him a favor. I had pondered deception,
the double life, daytime wife, night-time Jezebel, but I couldn't
see it. I don't think that I could handle it. All the lies, the
invented meetings, the exotic wardrobe! Why make him suffer, or me
for that matter, more than he had to.

My mind turned
to Simone. Was I looking for what she had found, that balance
between domestic intimacy and sexual abandon? I didn't know. I
didn't know where my journey was leading or what casualties there
would be along the way, or what capacity I had for hurting or being
hurt. Was Simone, for example, really happy? Did she not feel any
twinge of jealousy as she watched Frank being sucked off by
Adele?

And if she
didn't, could I separate those things so easily in my mind when all
my life I had learned that the function of sex, apart from the
biological, was the expression of love. It could never be either
the mere disembodied satiation of physical need, or a kind of
existential journey of the soul.

Was I just
playing some fatuous game predicated on my boredom, my bourgeois
selfishness, or was there really more to it. And if there was, was
I strong enough to fight, to give myself up, to live the daring
life that I dreamed of living.

After all,
what had I so far gained from this life: great sex, interesting
sex, but was that all? Had my sexual curiosity merely been
sated?

Freddie, one
of the reasons I could talk so easily with you, is that you often
enunciated my thoughts, clarified the muddle of my mind with your
laconic phrases. You talked about living on the erotic plane as an
aspect of consciousness, that because I had ignored this level for
so long I had repressed it; it existed in my mind like some
terrible demon. I talked of exploration; you talked of exorcism.
They were not mutually exclusive, you said, the end of my journey
would be a true integration of my sexual need into the broader
perspective of my life. There would be no join, no disjunction and
no repression. I was obsessed by sex because I had let it erode my
inner self. You reached up to your library shelf, handed me a copy
of Reich, and then quoted TS Eliot:

"We shall not
cease from exploration" - it went something like that - "and the
end of our exploring shall be to arrive in the same place and to
know it for the first time." It was the nearest thing I had to a
goal.

As it was half
term I was supposed to stay at my parents' for longer. I had been
vague about my intentions when I had arrived, but I think that they
had expected me to stay there at least four or five days. But I
couldn't, Freddie. I couldn't keep on going for those long walks
around the countryside with my father, or sit around the kitchen
table with my mother, pretending interest where none remained,
prevaricating against the onslaught of her questions, which she
assumed where more tactfully put than in reality they were. The big
question, what she really wanted to know, even more so than whether
I might come back to the village and live, is when Gregory and
myself were going to give her a grandchild.

Three days of
this kind of pressure, in the state of mind I was in, was too much
to bear. Secretly phoning a colleague from work I asked her to make
a call to me that night at my parents' house that would herald my
return to London. It worked, but the whole situation was more
awkward than I had hoped for, aware as I was of my mother and
father staring at me as I talked down the line. My excuse about
returning because of her boyfriend troubles seeming shockingly
flimsy and not very convincing, although the sharp disappointment
of my parents was hidden behind stoic phrases like, 'Well, it can't
be helped' or 'I suppose you must.'

I particularly
wasn't sure that my father had been convinced, especially as when
he was driving me to the station he asked me if I was sure
everything was okay.

"Why do you
ask?" I said defensively.

"Oh, nothing
much! You just seem a little distant, a bit vague, I wondered
whether there was something bothering you."

"No, dad,
everything is fine," I responded a touch more brusquely than I
intended.

"Well, you
know, Helena, if there was anything wrong, I'd like to think that
you could still share it with us, whatever it was."

That got to
me, that 'whatever it was'. Well daddy, it's like this: I'm leaving
Gregory because he doesn't fuck me properly, and I have this idea
that I want to live alone so I can fuck with whoever I want, how I
want and when I want. No, I could never go to my father again about
my troubles, because all my troubles, I was assured, would now most
definitely be of my own making.

I couldn't
resist, once the train had receded from my father's view, of
changing from my bulky patterned sweater and my mid-length gray
skirt into something more alluring. The clothes that I had brought
with me, god knows why, in the shoulder bag I had kept firmly
locked in my old room. It excited me this superman, rather
superwoman transformation; struggling in the confines of a British
Rail toilet, to slip on short revealing skirts and bulging blouses,
applying lipstick and mascara as the train jerked me from side to
side.

I returned to
my seat, the gray-suited Telegraph reading businessman, who had not
glanced once at me when I had claimed my seat by putting my
raincoat down, now lowered his newspaper with that male instinct
that recognizes some mysterious process when there is an alluring
woman around. I felt a little like one of those naughty schoolgirls
I remembered from my teenage years, who would truant from school,
slipping out of their dull greys and navy blue behind some old
stone wall metamorphosing into some exotic bird prepared for their
jaunt into town.

He wasn't bad
this businessman, mid-forties, slightly balding but quite virile
looking, the skewered tie some hint perhaps that behind the suited
conformity there lay something a little wilder, a little more
interesting. I met his gaze, but in that shy English way he turned
his gaze back to the business pages.

But I wasn't
ready for that yet. All my novel sexual experiences so far had
concerned me submitting to the will and pleasures of others. I
neither had the tools, nor the bravery, to chat him up. I think I
would have terrified him.

Although I did
allow myself a little fantasy: me returning to the toilet, giving
him a little knowing wink as I stood to my feet, following me, me
holding the door open to him, and as he slipped in, blow-jobbing
his enormous tool. In my fantasies I always imagined my male
protagonists to be extremely well-endowed; his hand delving into
the lace of my panties, pulling them down as I sat on his lap
impaling myself on him, and rode his phallus until he spurted
inside me. And then as my pussy dripped with his juice, he would
prise my legs apart, burrow his head between, and bring me to
orgasm with his dexterous tongue. A perfect zipless fuck as Erica
Jong might have imagined.

But of course
nothing like that happened. Now would be a different story. Now I
would have no hesitation, of making polite conversation with him,
steering the topic onto mild sauciness, or arousing him with my
intentions, maybe spreading my stockinged legs wide to give him a
deliciously encouraging view of my pantyless crotch, but not then
Freddie. You were my instructor. I needed more lessons. I needed
more confidence.

I met you that
night, do you remember, that very night. As soon as I had got home
I had gone to your place but you weren't there. I was right to
suspect that you were either with Adele or Simone. I didn't imagine
that you would be with both, as you later graphically told me; how
both of them stretched out on the bed before you, Adele lying on
top of Simone, both their sexes open to you, as you went from one
to the other, Simone pinching hard on Adele's nipples as you shot
your seed deep within her.