Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

The days were long past when Irena and Jack felt any need to justify or explain themselves to themselves. But when one of them met a new partner, certainly when Jack met Judy, he would say that his marriage was valuable to him, too valuable to risk having it damaged by such a commonplace, understandable thing as adultery. Men and women, he said, are imperfect, they fail to keep their promises of fidelity. They are betrayed by feelings of curiosity, vanity, lust. The world was full of people you might want to sleep with, and failing to sleep with them might lead to boredom and frustration, and these in turn might lead to the breakdown of the marriage. By doing it Jack and Irena’s way they did what they wanted with whoever they wanted, but it was essentially a case of kiss and tell, and the telling in itself became an erotic activity. The important thing was no secrets, no furtive phonecalls, no illicit assignations. Jack and Irena’s desires, their needs, their fantasies, were laid out on the kitchen table along with the morning post. Judy told Jack that she understood perfectly.

What she had more trouble understanding were her own motives for replying to the ad. She had only recently been ditched by Stuart. As well as the unassuageable anger, she was also feeling lonely in a sad, numb, dull sort of way. She wasn’t looking for a replacement for Stuart, and that was why she’d answered the ad. There was obviously something fishy about it. It had clearly been placed by someone who wasn’t telling the truth. It advertised the charms of a ‘tall, creative, good-looking, cosmopolitan man’ who was looking to share ‘hedonistic days and nights’ with an ‘independent, unconventional woman’. Its speciousness leapt up at her from the page. Here was someone who was going to turn out to be something unexpected, and she liked that. She answered the ad, included a telephone number and a photograph, and a couple of days later Jack phoned to arrange a date.

The meeting took place in a crowded wine bar in Covent Garden; safe, open, public territory. He was indeed tall and good-looking, a hint of authenticity that surprised her slightly; she had been prepared for him to be short and snaggle-toothed. His features were angular and regular. His hair was long and immaculately cared for. His fingernails looked as though they had been professionally manicured. He ordered a not bad bottle of white Burgundy and then he talked about himself. He talked about his job (something vague and media-based), about his flash car, his Hampstead house, his little place in the country, and though she wasn’t exactly impressed by all this, she was not so unworldly as to think that these things were irrelevant. Neither did she think they were necessarily true.

He did his little speech about marriage and faithfulness. It didn’t surprise her that he had a wife. Men with his looks and his patter always needed to have a woman in the background. However, what they didn’t need was to place lonely hearts ads, at least not for any of the usual reasons. She looked forward to finding out what his unusual reasons were.

She could tell that he found her foreignness attractive. Along with the prejudice and the casual distrust that her looks had brought her, there had always been those who were drawn to her difference and otherness. Jack let her tell a little of her own story and he was obviously disappointed to discover that she was not nearly as foreign as she might have been. Her voice, her background, her attitude, were in many ways surprisingly familiar. She could see his disappointment. She was not as exotic as he wanted her to be. She thought perhaps she should have lied, invented a more alien past for herself, for her protection as well as for his pleasure, but it was too late for that.

She felt mildly light-headed after the wine and she melted happily into the bucket seats of his car as he drove from Covent Garden to a little Italian restaurant in Hampstead. The place was intimate, pricey, very close to where he lived. She ordered the most expensive things on the menu and he seemed to approve. He said he liked a woman with a healthy appetite.

At some point between the first and second courses he launched into a speech about the horrors and problems of living in London, about how he wanted to live in the country full time, preferably by the sea, but alas his job kept him in the big smoke, close to his media contacts and connections. He complained about pollution and crime and noise and expense. He may have meant it, but it still sounded like a speech, like something learned and recited rather than something felt. Besides, like any Streatham girl, especially one who found herself living in a small attic room in Bethnal Green, Judy didn’t think Hampstead dwellers had much to complain about. In fact, she had met comparatively few Hampstead dwellers and that had something to do with why she was here with this strange, intermittently bogus man. She was making preparations, doing the groundwork, for getting laid in Hampstead.

She was prepared to be geographically disappointed. She suspected he might only live in the estate agents’ definition of Hampstead, in what might more realistically be called Belsize Park or even Gospel Oak. But in the event she was not disappointed at all. He lived in a converted coach house in what was undoubtedly Hampstead proper. She began to see that Jack was not nearly so bogus as she’d suspected.

As they entered the house he explained, in unnecessary detail it seemed to her, that his wife might be coming in later, probably with her boyfriend, but that it was nothing to worry about, they’d probably come in and go straight to bed and not bother them. Judy insisted that she wasn’t at all bothered.

The inside of the house did not look exactly like the home of a married couple. Everything was so tidy and ordered, no doubt by a maid or cleaner. Judy had a sense of pale, neutral colour: pale grey carpet, beige upholstery, magnolia walls. It was tasteful without displaying any taste. It looked designed and yet the designer had been keen not to impose any feelings or ideas on the place.

Jack sauntered around the living room, turning on lamps, drawing curtains, a short expedition to create mood and ambience. Somewhat drunk by now, rather than offer Judy more alcohol he got a bag from a drawer in a console table and lit a ready-rolled joint.

Judy had decided to flow along with events. She accepted the joint and inhaled deeply. Soon this would all be over. The sex would have taken place, she’d be eager to leave and phoning for a taxi to take her home. She knew Jack would not offer to drive her. It wouldn’t have been such a terrible night, and when she got home she’d be able to place another cross on her map of London.

Jack sat beside her, stroking her shoulder, and very briefly he kissed her. But he was awkward and restless. This was not to be a slow, melting seduction. He wanted to go upstairs to the bedroom, get the job done there. Judy had no objection.

The sex was better than she had expected, than she had any right to expect. It was athletic and exuberant, and it was not spoilt at all when, in the middle of it, Judy had thought to herself, If only Stuart could see me now. She felt a swift pang of fury, which she immediately redirected towards her current sexual partner. She sank her nails into the flesh of his back, and Jack chose to read this as passion, as evidence that he was doing a fine job.

When it was over Jack was much softer and more playful, a lot more genuine-seeming than he had been before. They lay quiedy together in silence and men they heard the front door opening downstairs, a man and a woman’s voices, their footsteps, their swift ascent to the adjacent spare bedroom.

Jack and Judy were amused by the sounds of sex that were soon coming through the party wall. They giggled conspira-torially as they listened to the masculine grunts, and the rhythms of intercourse that rocked the bed against the wall, but most striking of all was the loud girlish moaning that gradually transformed itself into squeals of delight and finally into screams of ecstasy. They were so loud, so theatrical, that Judy immediately had the sense that this was a performance being given at least partly for her benefit. Jack, she noticed, found the sounds powerfully erotic.