Tessa Hadley - The Master Bedroom

The fridge quivered to an end of one of its gulping, rattling ecstasies: Jamie, still standing, was suddenly frowningly aware of where he was. — Do we have to be in here?

Kate shrugged. — I’m on my way to bed, remember?

— But I need to talk to you: it would be better somewhere — less bright.

His youthful self-absorption (he had hardly looked at her) was overbearing; he was full of portent, her scepticism was weightless and dry by comparison. What could it matter anyway where they sat? Passing through the hall again, carrying her glass and the bottle in one hand, she felt with the other for the old Bakelite switches, which sprang noisily but made no miracle of light: they were left picking their way through floating patches of jewel-colour where the street light in the curve of the road outside shone through the stained glass on the stairs.

— I must get up a ladder tomorrow and replace these bulbs, she said irritably, knocking into Jamie who seemed to have stopped short. — I’ve been meaning to for weeks.

— It’s better, he said, turning on her, his voice thick. — It’s what I wanted, so that I could talk to you. In that bright light I couldn’t. I’ve been here to the house already three times tonight, and gone away again and then come back.

She decided he really was quite stoned, or drunk — not only from the whisky but from the beer he smelled of, that he must have had earlier with his friends — and she said so disgustedly, pushing him away; only he seized her free arm, clasped it tightly so that she felt the damp of his hot fingers through the loose knitting of her cardigan.

— No: he seemed to consider impartially. — I’ve cycled it off.

— Oh, listen, Jamie, let go of me. This is stupid.

— It’s not stupid, he insisted. — You know what it is. You know it isn’t stupid.

— I don’t want to know. Stop it. I’m old enough to be your mother, remember? I am precisely as old as your mother.

She tried to pull free, he grabbed clumsily for her other arm, and seemed to be searching out her face with his: the bottle smashed down onto the floor tiles with a crash as loud as an explosion. Kate managed to hang onto her glass by the rim: she felt the bottle’s whisky pool around her toes. — Oh, don’t move! she cried out fiercely. — Broken glass absolutely everywhere!

Her hands pinioning Jamie to the spot — as if he was a child, so that he wouldn’t step on the shards — weren’t tender.

— And now you’ve woken Billie, she moaned. — You absolute idiot.

Breathing into one another’s faces blindly at close quarters, inhaling the rising whisky fumes, they seemed to be able to hear the old lady’s bed creak upstairs as she sat up; then wakeful tentative silence.

— It’s all right, Mummy, Kate called. — I’ve only dropped a glass.

— Is it you, Kate?

— Go back to sleep, darling. Nobody’s hurt.

— Are you all right, Kate?

— I’m fine. Go back to sleep.

They listened until the bed creaked again as she lay down.

— What I was trying to tell you. Jamie continued: he hardly seemed to feel responsible for what he’d caused, or even notice it, though he did lower his voice.

— No! Kate hissed. — Don’t! Do you realise that I don’t have shoes on? She pictured herself marooned in a pool of viscous spirits and jagged glass pieces.

— It’s all right. Jamie surrounded and encompassed her. — I have thick soles, I’m not afraid to walk in it. I’ll lift you.

— But I don’t want to be lifted!

Clumsily he landed kisses — on her hairline, and, stooping, on her collarbone.

— Stop it! she protested.

He lifted her across the mess and carried her into the library.

His heat and urgency were a force; what was there in her to resist it? There was enough light at least for him to see to put her down on the old creaking protesting chaise longue.

— This is a terrible mistake, she insisted, pushing him off. — You’ve just got a crush.

— I’m completely serious. You don’t know how much I feel. I think about you all the time.

— But you’ve got no idea about me.

— How do you know what ideas I’ve got?

He stroked back her hair from her face with the hot palms that she imagined calloused from his cycling, lowered himself beside her, kissed her so that she tasted through the drink and the cigarettes the young, strong cleanness of his mouth. He was awkward, inexperienced, anxious, but his youth was absolute; his weight pinned her down painfully, there wasn’t room for both of them side by side. She could have pushed him away again, she could have told him to stop. She told herself she would, in a moment. If anything, she yielded to him out of disappointment in herself: and out of boredom. She had nothing else to do.

— At least take your boots off.

Obediently, without letting go of her, he pushed them off one after the other with his feet; with shaking fingers he failed to unbutton her blouse, then thrust it up out of his way instead.

— I knew you didn’t wear a bra, he said.

In her shame she only lay passively, not allowing herself to move or to respond.

Needless to say after all the clumsy manoeuvring it was too quickly over; almost as soon as he was inside her, Jamie cried out in sharp regret and collapsed on her heavily, breathing wetly against her ear.

— I was no good, he lamented, muffled.

— It doesn’t matter.

Coldly she looked past him, between her raised bare knees, a tangle of tights and knickers draggled from one ankle, at the dim room changed by what had happened in it. Well, it had been changed before, nothing would show, it wouldn’t make any difference.

He lifted his head to search her face. — Was it any good for you? He was chaotic with the audacity of what had been accomplished.

— For me it was the deepest possible disaster.

— Next time, he tried to promise tenderly.

— Next time? Kate rebuffed him. — Go home. Leave me alone. Don’t put the light on. I don’t even want to see what we have done.

— But I can come back again?

— Never again, she said. — Never.

She lay turned away from him, staring into the back of the chaise longue, refusing to look while Jamie stumbled about, pulling up his trousers, finding his T-shirt, trying to lace his boots. She knew that he stood for a while mutely still, desperate for her to turn round and be kinder; then she heard him pick his way through the mess in the hall, sending some piece of glass skidding. She imagined, without herself stirring, that she heard the soft pressure of his bike tyres on the path, on the road. Half an hour later, in bed upstairs alone — she’d swept the whisky bottle, in the light from the library that she put on at last, into a sticky heap, in case Billie wandered downstairs in the dark — she was overwhelmed suddenly with a crowding detailed awareness of his body. The smooth hairless brown skin taut across his ribs, impregnated with flavours of marijuana and sweat; the hot nape of his neck, his hair pushed behind his ears; the jawline tensed and intent, the swallowings in his throat; the undainty big man’s feet still in their socks: these pressed in on her so that she had to bury her face in the pillow, trying to shut them away.

Riches, heart-twisting riches: but not for her.

SUZIE’S SISTER (A few years older) arrived to stay with them, it wasn’t clear for how long. The first they knew about it was when the doorbell rang, on an evening when the sun had so blazed all day, raising a miasma of shimmering pollution above the city, that their house had seemed too flimsily paper-slight to offer any respite. They had looked longingly over at the dense trees of the old estate, but it was too hot to walk there and no one could bear to get inside a car again if they didn’t have to, once they were back from school and work. No sooner had the bell rung than Evie was inside the house, humping her large suitcase — pale blue, battered, decorated with pink hearts — over the threshold, the tail end of a taxi turning the corner of the cul-de-sac; Jamie arriving home at the same moment had opened the door for her. Evie immediately, urgently, stripped off the cardigan and mac she’d worn for ease of carrying; the extra layers must have been a torture. Her face — like Suzie’s, foxily cinnamon-coloured, freckled — was splotched with pink, and the dark roots of her short spiky blonde hair were wet.