Nikki Gemmell - I Take You - Part 3 of 3

What she does know: that religion’s a miracle of survival. That places of potent spirituality do not belong entirely to earth. The tugging, the faint whisper of a tugging … and Connie has to find her way back to them. Urgently, it feels now.

Alone, or with someone else.

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts

Everywhere the lovely tight buds of the roses, waiting for a springing into bloom, everywhere the vast loosening as light floods weary, winter-bowed bones, everywhere an uncurling, an unfolding. People, their faces open to the sky, flowers, the happy philadelphus and yellow-wort and the springing grass before the dryness of summer and it all turns to leaching heat and spareness and dust; it’s a tingling day of high giddiness and Connie wants to grab all of it, all, this teeming exuberance, wander through it with eyes wide and fingers trailing and be replenished, by all of it, smell it and giggle and delight. In the garden, of course.

‘I want to touch you like you touch me,’ she tells Mel. ‘I’ve never really touched your body, properly, like you have mine.’

‘How do I touch you?’

‘With reverence. I’ll never forget it. Because no man’s ever touched me like that before. If I never saw you again, after this day, I’d remember your touch for the rest of my life. It’s … stamped. Yes, that’s the word. Stamped. By tenderness. I’ll never forget it.’

Connie straddles Mel’s supine body and shuts her eyes and places her two palms flat on his chest.

‘You feel me as if you’re blind. As if it’s the last time you’ll ever touch me, every time you do that. It’s like you’re committing everything to memory, wondering and delighting and … sanctifying … yes, that. So I’ll never forget you. It’s a gift, you know.’

Mel’s penis stirs under her hand, Connie slips it into her, moves on him, soft. Brings him into a coming with her sensitivity learned and her quietness and as he peaks she bears down on him, voluptuous and feels him spasming in her like a dying animal and embraces as if it’s the last time, the last time ever, and she will never forget.

‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ he pants. ‘You’re trapping me.’

‘Yes, ssssh, it’s all right, no talk.’ A fingertip brushes down Mel’s lips, a vast smile fills her up.

They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions

On a glary morning of high heat Connie feels a quickening in her womb, as if the sunshine has touched it and bloomed it into happiness. All about her, nannies and babies in the garden and chitter-chat, all about her, friends falling pregnant, baby showers, girlfriends needing coffees and catch-ups and movie nights. Connie’s always a good sounding board, someone peaceful and repairing to have about. They call her a lot, checking up. She’s a listener, a deep pool of stillness and quiet just waiting to receive, one of those rare ones who never wants to talk about herself. She doesn’t butt in over sentences, trying to dazzle with her own thoughts, doesn’t crash into conversations with ever bigger and better and more hilarious anecdotes.

Connie wonders, though, at yet another brasserie of blonde wood and ringing talk, if the social world is becoming a little more shouty now, raucous, in your face? Everyone’s so eager to talk at you, over the top of you, cram in their two bobs’ worth – but actually, quietly, to enquire? To listen deeply? No, she doesn’t see much of that. Only with Mel, who asks so many questions of her and it’s so odd in a man; he seems at times as if he wanted to drink her up. Needing to understand.

She longs often for Mel’s quiet. The comfort of their silence, in sync. With Cliff the silence was oppressive, accusatory, as it shouted their differences, that they had so little in common and how did they get to this and they must spend the rest of their lives amid it.

Connie’s book club is fracturing as hospital appointments, pregnancy yoga classes, exhaustion, end-of-year concerts and summer parties disrupt life. Again and again it feels like Connie’s friends are succumbing and falling pregnant but they’re always careful with this news around her, Cliff being Cliff of course, and the accident … and she’s always so reticent about that side of her life now, poor lamb … there’s been a vast reassessing, a reining back … it must be very painful, not too much is asked.

‘Tragic, all of it. Such a supreme alpha male. He probably couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else’s child so that’s that, I guess. She’s the good wife, Con. Bless.’

No, Connie would not be drawn. On any of it. Such a rare orchid in her exquisitely tasteful, lonely married life; pitied, talked about, endlessly called on to be godmother as if that would be enough. But her thinking veers so fundamentally, often now; she’s reluctant to bring a child into this jangly, jittery world of keeping up, couldn’t say any of this to any of them. Sees it again and again, all around her: how children seem to send the women around her slightly mad. Piteously obsessed. Is it exhaustion? Empowerment now they’re no longer at work? Competitive banker husbands demanding too much of everyone? Too much time on their hands?

The friends who turn into harridans, bullies, where their child’s school is involved, haranguing the teachers and the principals over their precious, infinitely talented darlings; demanding better results, more readings in church, a bigger role in the school play, more tuition, attention, certificates. Imogen has a poo phobia so can never change her baby’s nappies, has to have round-the-clock help and Connie wonders if it’s a secret canniness. Charlotte, Honor and Floss have weekend nannies alongside nannies for each child during the week; when, Connie wonders, are those children actually noticed, let alone surrounded by their parents, basted in love like butter and cherished? India endlessly rails over the mobile phones given out as party gifts at a girl’s twelfth birthday, yet gives out goldfish to every child at her son’s sixth. Then the flurry of end-of-year teacher presents: the voluptuous bouquets from Wild at Heart as big as a television, bottles of Moët, exquisite gift boxes from Space NK. Then there’s the horror of the entrance exams, when her friends disappear into an insanity of pushing and tutoring and hating and shouting and deep, wrenching torment over who got into what. For Connie, sitting back among it all and quietly listening, endlessly listening, this world feels mad, unhinged, overripe.

Could she ever raise a child amid all this?

With no money, at that?

Could she ever compete on the back foot – or would she go mad with it?

I have been stained by you and corrupted … What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency and servility! How you chained me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourself down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into the wastepaper basket with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life.