Nikki Gemmell - The Bride Stripped Bare Set - The Bride Stripped Bare / With My Body

The bathroom, as soon as you can. You sit on the toilet seat, tear at the flap.

Some days apart from you I’m in pain, my yearning is so strong. At times you settle over me like a great warmth. I catch myself smiling into space. I dream of us running away, getting out.

The fierce pull as you read, like a hand inside your stomach. The words so close you feel you could almost put out a hand. You touch the letter against your belly, feeling the smooth, cold paper against your skin. You get up, you’ve been too long, you kiss Cole absently on the crown of his head as he unpacks his bag and it plunges you back to a time when the love glowed, for a moment, and then it’s gone. You sit at the kitchen table with the day’s paper unread before you, your hands cradling your forehead.

Perhaps Gabriel is like Ruskin who, it’s rumoured, idolised women so much he was incapable of consummating his marriage when he discovered to his horror that his wife had pubic hair. Perhaps he’s happily married in Spain, has seven kids; perhaps Martha’s made it all up to throw you off the scent. Perhaps he’s having an affair, is gay, caught by fear, can’t bear to let anyone see who he really is. Perhaps he’s one of those men who fell through the cracks – you know several, brothers and uncles of friends, lost men who’ve never found a sure footing with life, who are crushed by the challenge of living in this world and opt out and become loners or drunks. And put their parents, and lovers, through hell.

And then it hits.

What if he’s never been with a woman.

What if he doesn’t know how. A virgin, perhaps, and it all makes sense. The shyness. The pulling back at your touch. The ear tips blushing at a farewell kiss. Is it so implausible? You have an ex-colleague who’s a virgin at thirty-two and you’ve never been sure about Rupert, your cousin. And he, like Gabriel, is a tall, virile, masculine-looking man, and he, like Gabriel, never seems to be attached.

Would Gabriel be diminished in your eyes, if that were it?

No. It’s oddly endearing. And exciting.

An idea, beautiful in its simplicity. To initiate Gabriel, to teach him exactly what you want. To create a pleasure man, purely that, the lover every woman dreams of. You’ll be in control, for the very first time, you’ll be able to dictate exactly what you want. And there’ll be no expectation of how you should act.

That night Cole slips into your bed and curves his body in a question mark around your back.

An idea beautiful in its simplicity. And impossible.

For you don’t do that type of thing. It’s in the quietness of your clothes, your wholesome face, your ready blush. It’s in your horror at hearing of affairs, your stock response: but I could never do that to another woman.

Or Cole. You don’t think.

some people are terribly afraid of draughts and would rather be poisoned slowly than feel the breath of fresh air. this is grossly unwise and leads to many diseases

A gift box is delivered. It’s beautifully wrapped.

A vibrator.

You gasp. There’s no note. It’s obscene, fascinating, ridiculous, you’ve never seen one up close. You don’t touch it for a long time and then you turn it round, sink back on the bed, turn it on. You can control it, make it go exactly where you want, for as long as you want, or as short.

It’s small enough to keep in your handbag and your fingers brush it often, imagining exotic trips and Customs officers searching your luggage, having to explain it, stammering. You’ve never been searched, you’ve always been too innocent-looking and respectable for that.

There’s no note with the package but the address label is typed. Your fingertips run over the letters, the heavy imprint of them.

Anonymous, of course. How long has he been back? Did he ever go? Is this another game? You ring, leave messages on his machine, he will not return your calls.

Another letter.

I want to be the hand in the small of your back pushing you forward.

Trembling, wet, slumping back against the wall.

Snared.

it is mostly easier to do wrong than right

Another letter, until there are four. All typed, all short, and their words are etched like acid upon you.

Just to hold you, I ache for it, just to put my lips to the valley of your neck and slide down your body. I don’t like being apart from you, not hearing your voice, not having you close.

The phone rings, five minutes after you’ve opened the last.

Heeeey. He draws out the word, he’s always so playful with his greeting, as if it’s such a lovely surprise to hear your voice.

Hey stranger, you respond.

I’m back, he says in a gleeful sing-song.

Since when?

Since right this second. When can we meet? Are you free?

Yes, yes, hang on, give me an hour, no two.

It’s beginning to feel like infidelity as you get ready all stumbly and distracted, and the shower’s too hard and too hot and you force your body into stillness with the slow warm ooze of red wine and then you close your eyes to some music, the Jeff Buckley CD Cole can’t stand, she tied you to her kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair and from your lips she drew the hallelujah, and you smile at the gathering wet, the expectation.

You walk tall out the door, alive, greedy, knowing. Possibility is wide open before you, as vast as a lake and you want to plunge in, dive deep.

No underpants.

the cold plunge: nothing can be more invigorating and delightful to a robust girl

He’s already seated and you feel a tremor deep inside you at the sight of him, you’re aching with tenderness as he sits in the café, across the street. He looks up and blooms a grin; your heart is filled up.

You run across to that greasy cafe with its beans on toast and stewed tea that’s never hot enough, to where it all began eight months ago with a water splash. The letters are in your handbag and you’re bold now, sure, and so thoroughly sick of all the uncertainty and tension, the games, the teasing, the waiting. You need to get this said, there are two red patches on your cheeks and you ask him straight out: why do we go on like this, we could, you know, just get a hotel room, or perhaps go back to your flat, or, I don’t know, and you stop, you smile, so confident of his response.

His face.

Pardon, he asks.

His bewilderment.

Um, you hear yourself laughing, off-key, too much, OK, I’m sorry, and your face is stinging with embarrassment. But the letters you begin to say and then you stop and you snap: it doesn’t matter. You excuse yourself, you have to go, you have to get out. You grab your bag, it’s caught round the chair leg and you stumble out and walk down the street, bashing into shoulders and almost walking into posts and wait…wait…you hear behind you, but you don’t turn back and at last there’s the mouth of the tube station in which to disappear, to sink.

What have you done, what have you done?

Your head is in your hands on the tube hurtling home, knuckling your temples, trying to press it all out.

Fool, fool.

To think you knew him.

never remain in wet clothes or boots

There’s a light from under your front door. Your face is rearranged. Cole’s cooked dinner, it’s a mess, the water that was steaming the vegetables has boiled dry and the apartment’s filled with the sour smell of a saucepan caked black. But he’s tried.

A tight smile.

You haven’t been writing me any letters, have you, the jittery blurt.