Lovers and Liars Trilogy (200 page)

‘I do.’

‘I was never like that—which was one of the problems—but after Edward died, I made myself this vow: I’d become Edward; I’d give my father back the son he’d lost…I knew it would be hard, but I told myself that if I worked at it every day, if I threw myself into my studies at Oxford, I might get some of the way…And you know what happened?’ He gave her a sad smile. ‘All those fine resolutions—they lasted about five weeks. Then, when I saw it wasn’t working, I went to the opposite extreme: I stopped doing any work at all, I never went to lectures, I hung around with a stupid crowd of people I didn’t even like, and I drank. I drank all the time. I was drunk by ten o’clock in the morning and I made sure I stayed drunk all day.’ He shrugged. ‘They’d have thrown me out, in due course. They’re tolerant at Oxford, amazingly so. They knew the circumstances and perhaps they made allowances, I don’t know. But I was going out of my way to get sent down and they’d have obliged me in the end. Then I met Rowland—’

‘And it was Rowland who helped you?’

‘Yes.’ Colin made a face. ‘In a very grim sort of way. No sympathy; no indulgences, but he made me see—it was
my
choice: sink or swim. I tried very hard to shift the responsibility onto his shoulders, of course…’ He gave Lindsay a half amused glance. ‘And I still do from time to time. But he wasn’t having that, so, gradually, I learned. I came to admire him. He could make me laugh—he could be dry, even then. He was a hard taskmaster, but I wanted his approval so I reformed, in the end.’ He glanced towards Lindsay.

‘I know what you’re thinking: Rowland’s my replacement brother—it’s obvious, I know. And Rowland’s never pointed that out to me, which is his supreme compliment, I always feel. He never rubs in the fact that I can’t get through life without a brother figure, without a prop of some kind…’

‘Colin,
everyone
needs props sometimes.’ Feeling a rush of affection for him, Lindsay sat up and drew Colin to face her. ‘Even Rowland does sometimes, I expect, and I don’t believe that Rowland thinks you use him as a crutch. Besides, who’s propping me up now, and doing it very well? You underestimate yourself, Colin, and you put yourself down, you know.’

She looked directly into his eyes as she said this; her expression was so gentle, and so filled with conviction, that Colin was almost overcome. The desire to kiss her intensified.

‘Perhaps we’re both guilty of that,’ he said, drawing her down beside him again. ‘I feel very much as you do. I’m reasonably good at my job, but outside of that, I feel muddled and ineffectual most of the time. I overreact, or I fail to react, or I react much too late, or too soon…’ He took her hand in his. ‘I always feel as if—oh, I don’t know—as if I’m running for the last bus, and just as I draw close enough to jump on board, it pulls away—and all the passengers laugh.’ He paused. ‘Even if I caught it, it would probably turn out to be the wrong bus, going in the wrong direction. Everyone else always seems to know which bus to catch, and when it runs. Half the time, I can’t even read the fucking timetable.’ He smiled.

Lindsay was moved by the way he spoke. She turned towards him, inside the circle of his arms.

‘
Why
do you think that?’ she said. ‘I’m sure it isn’t true. You could catch any bus you wanted, Colin, any time. You’re funny and clever and kind…’

‘So are you.’ Colin’s voice became unsteady. ‘You’re all those things and more. You have beautiful eyes and beautiful hair, and a beautiful voice. If it’s any consolation, which it probably isn’t, I watched you with Tom in Oxford. I couldn’t help watching you, because I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I didn’t think you were childish, not remotely so. I could see you were sad about something. I think now—well, I think that in some ways you are
childlike
, which is a very different thing, and a good thing. I also think you’re very womanly. I can’t look at you without…You are—Lindsay, you make me…’

‘Oh God,’ said Lindsay, seeing what was about to happen next.

‘Please keep still,’ Colin said, with sudden firmness. ‘I’m going to kiss you. Don’t argue. Don’t move an inch. Stay still.’

To her own surprise, Lindsay obeyed him. He looked at her for a long while, tilting her face to his and stroking her hair. Then, with great gentleness, he rested his lips against hers. Lindsay closed her eyes tight. The kiss, so gentle to begin with, became prolonged. It could not escape her notice that, for a man who claimed always to miss metaphorical buses, he kissed alarmingly well.

When this first kiss finally ended and Lindsay had steadied her voice, she told him so. Colin smiled again and kissed her again, and Lindsay discovered she liked the taste of his mouth; she liked what he did with his mouth, and she also liked what he began to do with his hands. It was gentle, adept and very determined.

‘You have the most beautiful breasts,’ he said, undoing her blouse—something Lindsay discovered she was prepared to let him do without protest or demur.

‘You are lovely,’ he said, kissing each nipple in turn. ‘And I have wanted to do this ever since I first walked into that room in Oxford and saw you. I may have had the mother of all hangovers, and my brain may not have been functioning too well, but the rest of my senses were.’

‘
Then
?’ Lindsay said, knowing she was flattered by this revelation, but excusing this as a weakness of her sex.

‘Then and since,’ he replied. ‘In the restaurant last night. At Emily’s. When I had to leave you here last night. I find it very hard indeed to look at you and not think about making love to you. No doubt that’s very bad. Oh, you’re wearing stockings. I hoped you might be. Do you know what stockings do to a man?’

‘I can
feel
what they’re doing to a man,’ Lindsay said, catching that glint of amusement in his eyes. She found herself beginning to smile, then stopping, hesitating, then touching him.

His response was immediate: a sharp intake of breath, an involuntary leaping of his flesh against her hand. He clasped her against him, and it was perhaps then that she decided. The ‘yes’ came into her mind when she saw his physical need, saw his desire and her own power to assuage it, and realized that she could give pleasure as well as receive it. It had been too long, she thought, since she had last experienced a simplicity of that kind.

‘Oh God, what am I doing?’ she said, with a smile, reaching for his shirt buttons.

‘It looks to me as if you’re removing my shirt,’ Colin said. ‘I’d like it very much if you removed the rest of my clothes as well.’

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she continued, undoing his belt and the zip of his jeans. Colin guided her hand, at which point Lindsay, who had been in little doubt anyway, realized just how good an idea this was.

‘Colin?’ she said, some while later.

‘Mmmm?’

‘I think I’d better warn you—I’m out of practice at this.’

‘I’m not.’

‘So I see.’

There was a long silence, while Colin demonstrated the truth of his last statement. Lindsay discovered that she was losing her residual control.

‘Colin,’ she began again, in a somewhat shaken, husky voice, as he lifted his head from between her thighs, having given her revelatory pleasure. ‘Yes?’ he replied, in a distracted way, kissing her stomach, then her breasts, and moving so that Lindsay could close her hand around his cock.

‘Colin—we could stop this now.’

‘No, dear Lindsay, we could not.’

‘Wait a minute. I have to ask you something. Do you like me, Colin?’

‘Yes. This bit of you especially. This bit I love.’

‘Listen, I like you too…’

‘There?’

‘Especially there. But—listen. I don’t want to stop liking you, or you me, and sometimes sex has that effect.’

‘If you imagine’, Colin said, with great firmness, ‘that I’m going to discuss that now, you must be mad. Now be quiet. Open your legs. Is that nice?’

‘It’s amazing. I—’

‘Oh, bloody
hell
. I don’t have any condoms.’

‘I’m on the pill.’ Lindsay kissed him. ‘I don’t have any sexually communicable diseases…’

‘Neither do I.’

‘In that case—’

‘I agree.’

‘Colin, as long as you understand—it’s so long since I’ve done this that I’m practically a virgin. I’m practically a nun…’

‘I find that an encouragement,’ he said, with a lift of one diabolic eyebrow. ‘Especially the nun.’

‘As long as you’re sure. I—’

Colin saw there was only one thing for it. He silenced her with a kiss; shortly afterwards, and as he had suspected might be the case, she began to demonstrate a response and a proficiency unlikely to be found in a nun; and although not silent, she stopped talking as well.

Some time later, Colin disentangled himself from her arms with the greatest reluctance. He went into the bathroom, closed the door and stared rapturously at the air. He turned on all the taps to drown the sound of his voice, and told the taps and the walls and the bath how much he loved Lindsay.

When he had done this several times, and felt he had got it out of his system, so there was no danger of his saying it to Lindsay herself—
festina lente
, after all—he returned to the bedroom. As soon as he saw Lindsay lying back against the pillows, her skin rosy and her hair damp from their exertions, he felt that since he had scrambled his schedule anyway, and just performed an act he had intended not to risk attempting for at least two weeks, he might as well admit the truth.

He was about to do so, indeed it was hard for him to look at her and
not
do so, when he remembered those occasions in his past when such lack of caution had served him ill.

He began to walk about the room, and, slowly a terrible uncertainty, a terrible post-coital misery settled about him. What if Lindsay never came to reciprocate his feelings? What if she were regretting their love-making right now? He began to see that it was possible, even probable, that Lindsay would never let him make love to her again. He groaned aloud.

‘I need a cigarette,’ he said. ‘I need two.
Four
.’

‘That’s all right.’ Lindsay smiled and stretched. ‘You can give me one as well.’

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘I need one now. I’m feeling overcome.’

Colin found ‘overcome’ encouraging. He lit two cigarettes and returned to the bed. Lindsay curled up like a cat in the crook of his arm. She puffed, coughed, and gave up. Colin stared hard at the wall opposite. Do not mention love, said a stern admonitory voice in his mind; don’t use that word under any circumstances; no sneaking it in; play it cool.

‘That wasn’t very good,’ Colin burst out. ‘In fact, it was disastrous. It was an unmitigated disaster, from beginning to end.’

‘Was it?’ Lindsay smiled and curled closer. ‘I thought it was wonderful. I enjoyed it. The beginning, and the middle, and the end.’

‘You didn’t come,’ Colin said, in the tones of one approaching the scaffold, ‘and I came too soon. Oh God,
God
.’

‘I very nearly did,’ Lindsay said, in a comfortable way. ‘I was only about two millimetres off. And I didn’t think you came too soon; I think you came at exactly the right moment. One can’t always synchronize, and it felt so good when you did.’

‘It makes it worse if you’re kind.’

‘I’m not being kind, I’m telling you the truth. And it
was
the first time.’

‘That’s true.’ Colin’s demeanour brightened. He found he did not need the cigarette; in fact, he decided, he would never need one again. He abandoned it and took Lindsay in his arms. Her eyes dazzled him. Don’t even
think
about saying it, said that voice in his mind.

‘I expect it’s me.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘I expect I was a disappointment.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘I have stretch marks on my stomach; I expect they put you off. Tom’s nearly twenty and I
still
have stretch marks.’

‘Where?’

‘There, and there, and there.’

Lindsay indicated some faint silvery lines. Colin began to kiss them. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said. ‘I love your stretch marks. I love every single one of them…’ Be very, very careful, said the voice in his mind.

‘I expect my rhythms weren’t very good,’ Lindsay went on in a doleful voice. ‘I told you I was out of practice. You went into this amazing sort of tango sequence and I was still doing the waltz.’

‘Oh, God,
God
. I wasn’t giving you the right signals…’

‘Oh God. I wasn’t picking them up…’

There was a small silence. Colin stopped kissing the stretch marks and looked up. Lindsay smiled; he smiled. His diabolic eyebrows rose in two quizzical peaks. Lindsay kissed them. She kissed his marvellous hair. That now familiar warmth and amusement returned to Colin’s eyes.

‘You’re teasing me,’ he said. ‘You’re sending me up.’

‘I most certainly am.’

‘I love you when you do that,’ Colin said. At which point the admonitory presence in his mind washed its hands of him and gave up in disgust.

Dalliance ensued. During the dalliance, Colin suggested that in view of Lindsay’s comments on making love for the first time with a new partner, a second experiment might be wise. Lindsay agreed. After this, they slept in each other’s arms very peacefully for a while; on waking, they discovered that Colin did not have to work that day, and Lindsay, who had been going to begin her Chanel research, could put it off with no problems at all.

They lay side by side, talking quietly and companionably. Lindsay, feeling at peace, realized that she was happier than she had been in a long, long while, and Colin experienced an absence of anxiety so unusual he decided it must be bliss. He told her of the long, strange and painful night he had spent, and she listened with a care and concern that belied the criticisms of Rowland McGuire. ‘I’m proud of you. You slew the dragon,’ she said, when Colin recounted his battle with that tape-recording machine, and Colin, who had not thought of it like that, felt comforted and hoped this was true.

‘So I didn’t sleep at all last night,’ he explained, some while later. ‘I had no sleep and then I walked about a thousand blocks in the rain. All I could think about was seeing you. I had to see you, and now I see why.’