Ralph's Party (8 page)

At six o'clock, or thereabouts, he closed the book, put it back under the table, ruffled the duvet, turned out the light and left the room. He sat at his desk, tapped a Marlboro out of its packet, lit it, smoked it and waited for Jem and Smith to get home.

'What's she doing here?' Siobhan asked, in a tone which she hoped sounded casual and light-hearted and didn't betray what she felt inside — insecure, jealous, nervous. She was just so bloody pretty and sort of fit looking, glowing with health and vitality; al the stuff that had waved goodbye to Siobhan years before. And she had such lovely hair.

It was Karl's leaving party at the Sol y Sombra, just a few drinks with his students, some of whom he'd been teaching for five years, to wish him luck in his glittering new career.

'She's one of my students, didn't I tel you?' Karl was drinking from a bottle of lager.

Definitely not. 'I don't think so. You might have, I don't remember.'

Cheri didn't realy strike Siobhan as the Ceroc type, she seemed more aerobic, more of a sweating-at-the-gym sort of girl.

'She's very, very good actualy. She was my partner for a while, after you stopped coming.'

'Oh, realy.' A filthy flash of unaccustomed jealousy pierced her stomach. Brightly, brightly, keep smiling, Siobhan; don't let him know you're jealous.

'You realy don't like her, do you?' Karl asked unexpectedly.

'Wel, I mean, I don't know her. She just doesn't seem like a particularly nice girl, that's al. Not realy my! type. She doesn't pass the Pub Test.' Karl knew about Siobhan's Pub Test; it was her way of ascertaining whether or not a girl was her type. She imagined being in a pub with the girl in question. If she could envisage sharing a couple of pints, a bag of crisps and some easy chat with her, she passed; if not, she was happily consigned to the not-my-sort-of girl pile.

'Yeah, I don't like her either.'

Briliant! 'Oh realy, I thought you thought she was al right.'

'No, you were right, Shuv. She's a selfish cow. I didn't even invite her tonight, one of the other girls did.'

'So what don't you like about her?' Siobhan's curiosity was aflame.

She wasn't used to Karl forming such forthright opinions about people, doing vindictive things like deliberately not inviting people to parties, caling people 'selfish cows'.

'I don't know. I just agree with you, that's al. There's something about her I don't like. I can't put my finger on it.' In fact, Karl was furious. He'd told the little bitch not to come tonight and she'd promised she wouldn't.

'Why would I want to come to some sad little drinks with al those sad little Ceroc people? Don't worry. Bring your fat girlfriend —

she'l be safe, I promise you.'

And now here she was, dressed up to the nines in some skin-tight black cotton dress with a low-cut back, drinking lager from a glass and flirting with poor Joe Thomas, the permanently sweaty looking bank clerk with the Buddy Holy glasses and too much Brylcream, who looked as if he was about to die of entirely unconcealed excitement.

Karl couldn't remember who'd started this whole mess any more. Obviously he'd noticed Cheri—any man would notice Cheri. But then, life was ful of women to be noticed; if you started doomed affairs with al of them you'd never get anywhere. Picking up women wasn't Karl's style. It must have been Cheri.

He'd bumped into her one day at the front door, struggling for her key. He'd just got back from a dance class, so he had on al his fifties gear, and she'd asked him if he'd been to a fancy-dress party.

When he'd explained about Ceroc, she told him that she was a dancer, that she'd trained as a balerina until she was twenty, that she loved rock 'n' rol, her father had taught her to jive as a child.

So Karl had invited her along to the Sol y Sombra, and she'd come.

In retrospect, knowing what sort of a girl she was, she'd probably been flirting like mad with him then, sending out frantic sexual signals that he - honestly — had been completely oblivious to.

It wasn't until the first time he danced with her that he felt anything beyond a purely aesthetic appreciation of her. She was quite simply the best dancing partner he'd ever had. Her classical training added beauty and grace to the most basic Ceroc moves and she felt like a holow dol, light and effortless, feathery and feminine. Ceroc was a man-led dance, and she folowed his moves almost telepathicaly, injecting just the right amount of energy and enthusiasm into her dancing, smiling al the time.

Karl had been blown away. So blown away, in. fact, that he hadn't mentioned it to Siobhan when he got home that night — not because of guilt, but because he knew he would blush vivid red and Siobhan would ask him why, and then he'd blush even more vivid red, and it just wasn't worth sowing seeds of doubt in her mind over nothing. So he hadn't said anything. He hadn't hidden it either, but Siobhan was obviously never look-ing out of the window when he and Cheri got back from class together, and since there was no chance of Siobhan and Cheri forming any sort of neighbourly friendship, she had never known.

Which of course made it easier for Karl neatly to compartmentalize his life when the dancing partnership turned into something a little more carnal. Karl had been shocked rigid when Cheri had first kissed him. It was definitely a scenario that had been swirling pleasantly through his mind for a few weeks, but then, life is ful of enjoyable imaginary scenarios, and it would be impossible to enact al of them.

'Let me buy you a beer,' she'd said one night. And then, when the beer was gone and it was time for them to go, 'I realy fancy another drink. Let me buy you a tequila.' And then, when those were gone,

'Let's have another, go on.' She'd had to persuade him, joly him along, but he'd agreed in the end. After a third tequila they were laughing and relaxed, and Cheri had swiveled around towards him on her barstool, smooth brown legs conspicuously crossed, eyelids lowered, her body closing the gap between them and, before any embarrassment had a chance to creep in, she'd locked her eyes on his and kissed him. Gently at first, hoping that she wouldn't have to do al the work, that he'd respond to the sensual brush of her lips and kiss her back. She'd looked at him again. 'I love dancers,' she'd said, her eyes moving from his lips back to his eyes and to his lips again. She'd . grazed his lips, a little harder this time. 'I especialy love Irish dancers,' she'd drawled, 'with soft lips.' He'd kissed her then, and Cheri felt a rush of triumph.

Their kisses had become longer and harder, and his tongue probed deeply into her mouth. He'd brought his chest up close to hers, gripped her back and emitted a smal, slightly animal grunt. 'Let's go to the office,' he'd groaned, searching his pockets for the key, and they'd stumbled into the smal, stifling room, pungent with the smel of stale cigarette smoke and warm plastic at the end of a long, hot summer's day.

Cheri had let her dress drop to the floor, a practised procedure, and smiled at the look on Karl's face as he saw her for the first time, unwrapped, pert, smooth and naked. He'd been awkward, fumbling with his clothes, clearing a space, never taking his eyes from her body. 'God you're beautiful,' he'd said, roling a condom on to his erect penis. It was al over in five minutes, hard, fast and uncomfortable. Karl was sweating profusely, his trousers stil around his ankles, his quiff drooping and faling into his eyes. 'Oh, Jeez,' he kept saying as he came, 'Oh, Jeez.' And then he'd puled up his trousers. 'Shit, it's hot in here,' he'd said, and handed her her dress from where it lay on the floor. Tm going to wash my hands.'

That should have been it realy. They should have left it there. But, it seemed, as far as Cheri was concerned, it wasn't over. It wasn't over because, although she'd seduced him and aroused him and led him astray, he wasn't grateful. And she wanted him to be grateful.

But he wasn't. He never asked for more than Cheri offered him and took even that with an affronting lack of graciousness. She'd almost had to drag him up to her flat one weekend when he'd told her that Siobhan was away. She'd cleaned the flat from top to bottom, cooked a romantic meal, and Frank Sinatra, his favourite, wafted aluringly from room to room. There were clean sheets, new underwear, flowers. But it hadn't made any difference. It was longer and more comfortable and less sweaty, but it was stil entirely perfunctory, and Karl had wolfed down his dinner afterwards and gone back to his flat to watch tely on his own.

For his part, Karl wasn't sure why it had dragged on for so long. In a strange way which he couldn't quite explain, he was scared of CherL Her emptiness and coldness frightened him, and he couldn't help feeling that if he tried to extricate himself, he might pay dearly for it - Rosanne in a pot of boiling water sort of thing. She'd been so determined to have him, so determined to make him want her that he hadn't dared go against her wishes. And if he was honest with himself, there'd been something strangely aphrodisiac about that intensity, about his fear — patheticaly, it had turned him on.

He had truly believed that he would never, ever, in a month of forevers be unfaithful to Siobhan; it was more than unthinkable, it was ridiculous. And he certainly would never have thought it possible that he'd end up having a torrid affair with a bimbo —

which is al Cheri was, a blonde bimbo with legs up to here and lovely tits, who could dance like an angel.

He knew he was nothing special to Cheri, but then he didn't suppose that anyone would be anything special to Cheri. It was, had been, purely and simply, fucking as an extension of dancing, a natural conclusion in a way to a traditionaly sexual art form. They danced so wel together that it stood to reason they would fuck wel together.

It had been much easier than Karl could have imagined, lying to Siobhan, facing her fresh from the Sol y

Sombra, coital sweat stil drying on the back of his neck, the tang of rubber stil perceptible in his boxer shorts. Funny how he didn't blush now, now that he actualy had something to feel guilty about.

He'd spent his entire life blushing at inopportune moments, his face reddening for no reason whatsoever, and now, he could walk into his flat, face his faithful and trusting girlfriend of fifteen years, his dick smeared with the vaginal secretions of the blonde bimbo from upstairs, and remain perfectly alabaster white. Ironic.

It hadn't occurred to him that girls like Cheri got pregnant. She was just so utterly souless, so cold, so vacant and devoid of emotion, so different to how he expected a real woman to be that he hadn't thought for a moment that she even possessed a womb. Cheri was a dancer, a looker, not a mother. The thought of a baby suckling at those perfect rose-coloured nipples was ludicrous, the idea of Cheri pushing a pram, of Cheri changing a nappy, was laughable.

Siobhan was what Karl imagined a mother to be like. Siobhan was real, she was alive, she had a heart so big she could have mothered the entire country and stil had room for the rest of the world. Karl had never been loved by anyone the way he'd been loved by Siobhan, such clean, easy, honest love, not the possessive, clingy insecure love so many people mistook for the real thing. She had never tried to change him, to alter him in any way. She loved him just the way he was, and Karl didn't think you could ask for much more than that. Except, for some reason, passionate sex with unsuitable, unpleasant women.

Karl was feeling incredibly uncomfortable now, with Cheri and Siobhan in the same room. And Cheri had a look about her, like she was here for a reason, had a hidden agenda. She turned away from Joe Thomas for a moment and caught Karl's eye - she smiled widely at him and, to Joe's obvious disappointment, started to make her way over towards Karl and Siobhan.

'Hi!' she beamed, 'Hi! It's Siobhan, isn't it? I haven't seen you around for ages. Haven't you been getting out much lately?' she held out her tanned hand for Siobhan to shake. Karl felt sick as the two women's flesh touched. Tm going to miss your boyfriend so much.'

'Oh, realy?' Siobhan replied amiably.

'Yes, Tuesday nights wil never be the same again,' she said, looking at Karl.

Karl found himself almost glued to the spot, his bottle of lager frozen half-way between his mouth and the table, watching the scene unfold before his eyes.

'You must be so proud. When do you go on the air, Karl?'

He colected himself, conscious of a smal stream of sweat wriggling down his temples. 'Erm, Monday week, isn't it, Shuv?' he said, handing the conversation back to the women.

Tes, that's right. He's at the station al next week, though, to learn the ropes, you know, learning how to put those jingle cartridges in the jingle machine, al that technical stuff,' Siobhan replied with a little laugh.

Wel, Karl, good luck and everything. Fd have to have stopped coming to the lessons anyway soon. Look' - she held out her left hand, palm down—Tm getting married.'

'Oh, what a beautiful ring.' Siobhan held Cheri's fingertips gently in hers while she examined it, turning it to catch the light.

'Yes, it belonged to my fiance's mother. She was one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen.'

Your fiance - is that the tal guy with the blond hair?' Siobhan asked.

'Oh, no, that's Martin. Oh, God, I wouldn't marry him. No, it's Giles. I've known him since I was nineteen. He's very wealthy, very important in the City. He's got a house in Wiltshire and one in Australia and a flat in Docklands.'

'Where wil you live? Are you going to move out of Almanac Road?'

'No, I think I'l keep it as
a pied-d-terre.'
She sounded uncomfortable using the expression. You've got to have a bit of space, haven't you?' She tossed her hair over her shoulder and laughed. 'Anyway, you two, I hope you don't mind but I'm leaving now. I've got a big day tomorrow looking at dresses, and I've got to find a venue for the reception.'

Karl and Siobhan both murmured their lack of disappointment.

'Karl, my coat's in the office. Would you mind opening it up for me?' Cheri placed her hand on his bare arm and he jumped slightly, the first time he'd moved since Cheri had approached them.