Tessa Hadley - The Past

— Oh, don’t be sorry, she said. — I’m not sorry.

She saw how his reddish fair hair was clipped close to the raw skin above his ears and at the nape of his neck, and she thought he was chafing inside his shirt collar and tie and his crumpled suit. It was a long time since Jill had kissed anyone except her husband, and she had forgotten how abrupt the transformation was, how the smiling surface of personalities and faces receded and you were thrust into brash new perspectives, up against the flesh and the inner life of a man, with his heat and his smells, and the nuances of his movements which betrayed how he withheld himself, or gave himself. In Mikey’s case, thank goodness, the smells were pleasant: of soap and then something sweetish and lemony, like dried grass. She was still hanging on to him with both hands, grasping his sleeves so that he couldn’t pull away from her in his embarrassment. As the married woman, she knew she must take the initiative, if anything more was going to happen between them without drawn-out prevarication. When she kissed him again — pushing harder this time, running the spread fingers of her hand up from his nape through his bristling short hair, cupping the back of his skull and drawing his mouth down more deeply and heavily against hers — she felt how, if she took this lead, then he would follow her. But what now? They couldn’t do anything in here, on the bare floor. He didn’t even have a proper coat to take off, for her to lie on.

— You know, she said, — we could take a look at the Goods’ cottage, the one in Cutcombe wood. In so many ways — I mean, apart from running water and things — that would be more convenient. I know that it’s unlocked. We could go there now.

— I did enquire about it. It’s not one of the estates we deal with. Strictly speaking.

— But let’s take a look, she insisted. — Right now. Not in your professional capacity. Just as a friend.

Jill hardly spoke, all the way back down into the valley. Only she told him where to park: there was a passing place he could pull into, at the side of the road. She didn’t want the excitement which was choking her up and suffusing her to leak away — surely he felt the same, she knew he did. Towards the end of that first dreamlike, innocent kiss, something had changed between them — but if they began talking about ordinary things, then they would lose the way they had torn through the ordinary fabric of the day, to get to what they wanted. The clunk of the car door when Mikey slammed it shut reverberated like a blow inside her, as if her body were hollowed out. She went ahead of him on the path through the woods — this wasn’t the same path she had taken with the children, or with Tom, but a steeper one, quicker, weaving down between the trees. They were neither of them wearing suitable shoes, and from time to time they slipped on the leaf mould, grabbing at branches to stop themselves, never quite falling. Every so often Jill looked round at Mikey coming after her and smiled, putting all her encouragement into that smile — nothing could go wrong, they were immune, nothing could touch them. She bent down and took off her heels, then continued in her stocking feet, carrying her shoes in her hand, smiling back at him again, not feeling any pain from the sharp stones and twigs on the path, or the bramble that dragged against her calf, tearing her tights. The cottage door would still be unlocked, they wouldn’t meet anyone. She knew all this would work out.

She had supposed that when they pushed open the door, they would find all the mess of Tom’s night on the floor in the Goods’ cottage. But to her surprise the little room was perfectly tidy; he must have put away all that bedding, although he never so much as straightened the sheets at home. Even the slice of bread in its plastic bag was gone from the floor; only the cold fire in the hearth and the empty brandy bottle were signs that the two of them had ever been in here. Of course she couldn’t exclaim over any of this to Mikey. They stood in the doorway, peering into the little room which was a dark cave carved from the brilliance of the afternoon outside. Jill still had her shoes in her hand. She had imagined carrying on with Mikey where she and Tom had left off, on the floor in this room: now that didn’t make sense.

— You couldn’t live here, Mikey said sternly. — It’s horrible.

When they went inside and the door swung shut behind them, they could hardly make each other out until their eyes got used to the dimness: his shirt front was a looming patch of white, unattainable. The house with Mikey in it seemed flimsy as a doll’s house — Jill saw its impossibility through his eyes. — Never mind, she said, falsely bright, crossing to the tiny window which was deep-set in the stone wall, looking out into the treetops where the end of the valley fell steeply away below them. — It doesn’t matter. It was only an idea.

He opened a cupboard door and found the stairs behind it, disappeared as if he were climbing up inside a well: she heard each step creak with his weight, and then his footsteps as he prowled close above her head. Leaving her shoes at the bottom of the stairs, she went up noiselessly after him. The first bedroom was all but filled up with a double bed, heaped with a tangle of blankets and eiderdowns where Tom must have dropped them; the sloping walls were papered with a pattern of pink baskets overflowing with fruit, and the air was stuffy with the tainted smell of ancient cloth, heated by the sun shining down through the roof. Old clothes and yellowed newspapers and magazines were piled up on the floor all around the bed. There was another, single bed in a second room, with a few rough blankets on it. — In this day and age, Mikey said, — you can’t believe people still live like this. You’d be surprised at some of what we see, in the property business.

She told him how Mrs Good who’d lived here used to give her sweets, which she had thrown away. Judging by the mess, he said, that was very sensible.

— When I’m an old woman I want to give everything away, so there’s nothing to leave behind.

— You won’t be this kind of old woman. You’d never let things get into this state.

— How do you know? I might become one of the crazy ones, frightening children.

He smiled indulgently. — There are decent people and there are people who just don’t care. You have to have self-respect.

Jill wondered what Mikey thought about her self-respect — not much, probably, as she’d brought him here. She was losing her confidence that he wanted her; perversely, the more he seemed like a stranger to her, remote and rather stolidly conventional, the more attractive she found him. How had she not seen that his bulky tall physique, cramped in the tiny room, might gain this power over her? She had been a fool, imagining all the power was on her side. Perhaps he was right — there were decent people and she wasn’t one of them. — You don’t really believe that, do you? she said. — Some people with tidy houses behave awfully and cruelly and aren’t decent at all.

Mikey was struggling with the latch on the casement window. He said they could do with some air.

— So you can’t imagine me living here?

— It’s not a fit place to bring children.

— I could make it nice, she stubbornly said. — Clean it up, clear it out. Put up nice curtains. You’d be amazed what a difference those little details make.

When Mikey finally got the window open the breeze blowing in was a relief, flicking at the newspapers on the floor. He turned back to Jill with a closed and preoccupied look as if he were worried by something else apart from her; for a moment she thought he was going to put her aside regretfully but firmly and head downstairs, saying he had to get back to the office. Instead, without any preamble, he seized her by the shoulders and began kissing her again: not on the mouth this time but on her hair and her neck, pressing her head between the palms of his big hands. Then he was kissing her breasts through the cloth of her blouse, undoing its buttons determinedly one by one, tugging at them if they resisted, so that she had to help in case he pulled them off.