Alex Preston - The Revelations

‘That was just marvellous. I’m still buzzing.’ She fiddled with the radio as they pulled out onto the King’s Road. Marcus stared ahead into the dark.

‘It’s the first time I’ve felt really properly alive since the baby,’ she continued, speaking over a stuttering procession of different radio stations. ‘It’s amazing how music can lift you out of yourself. It’s what David always says, isn’t it? That we’re nearest to God in music and silence.’

Marcus accelerated through an amber light, clenching the steering wheel hard. Abby found a channel that played buoyant dance music and sang along happily as they made their way through thick traffic homewards.

*

Marcus reached for a bottle of red wine as soon as they walked in the door, slumped on the sofa and opened a copy of the New Statesman . Abby knew he had read it weeks before. She watched his eyes, which didn’t move with the text but instead seemed to stare through the paper into the distance. He slurped the wine as he drank it, rolling it in his mouth and sucking air over it on his tongue. It sounded disgusting but Abby sat at the table watching him and didn’t say anything. She felt suddenly terribly far from him, unable to bridge the distance between them. When they brushed their teeth she saw him spit purple into the sink and noticed that his lips were still stained black from the wine.

Later in bed she tried to talk to him. She knew he had drunk enough to make him irritable, but she needed to connect with him. She needed to let him know how proud she was of his preaching — because that was what it was, he had preached and it sounded just like David. She pressed herself against him, felt the familiar boniness of his body, the muscles under his armpits and along his neck, the hard curve of his arse.

‘You were amazing tonight, darling. I know you must be exhausted, but I want you to know how proud I am of you.’

Marcus stopped himself speaking for a moment. He knew he was irrationally angry. He hadn’t eaten dinner and had drunk just enough to pull a black veil over his mind. He always regretted these rages in the morning, even though in the moment he felt such enormous clarity, felt as though the world was transparent and he could finally see the workings of the machine. But he loved Abby, and he struggled to keep his thoughts inside.

‘I’m so tired. Please, let’s just go to sleep.’

‘But I can’t. I want to talk about it with you. Did you feel my energy? I mean, the way I danced in that song it was like I was full of something burning. I think we’re going to do an amazing job this year. It’s sad that we’ve lost a couple already, but I really think the rest of them will stick it out. Wouldn’t that be marvellous?’

‘Yes, that’d be great. ’Night.’

She was quiet for a moment. Then, slipping her hand slowly inside the tracksuit bottoms he wore to bed, she took hold of his cock.

‘Let’s have sex, darling. I really want you. And I think what happened tonight might have been a message. I think it’s maybe a sign that if we do it tonight it’ll all work out.’

She felt Marcus growing hard, wrestled her nightie over her head and switched on the bedside light. When she turned back to him she saw Marcus lying staring up at the ceiling. He was cracking his knuckles.

‘What is it?’ She placed her hand on his stomach.

‘I don’t want to have sex. Not after tonight.’

‘Come on, darling. You were just like David in that discussion group, magnetic.’ She took his cock in her hand again and found it small and limp.

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t find things as easy as you do.’

She began to tug gently at his penis, taking his hand and placing it over her pussy.

‘I don’t find it easy, darling. But it gets easier the more you do it.’ She began to move herself back and forward, pressing herself against his fingers.

‘But I get the impression that with you it’s instinctual, something that comes naturally. It’s a real struggle for me.’

Abby was panting slightly. Marcus’s cock was still small and shrewlike in her hand.

‘Why do you always have to make everything so difficult, darling? Just relax and go with the flow. Good things will happen, I promise.’

Marcus pulled his hand away from her and sat up in bed.

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Jesus, I don’t know if I can handle this.’ He wouldn’t look at her as he spoke.

‘What do you mean, this?’

‘I mean us, a baby, the life you have chosen for us. I’m beginning to wonder how we got old so quickly.’

She stood up, clasping her nightie in a ball at her chest. Her voice came out very clear and controlled.

‘It’s not my fault. Your life is not my fault.’

‘What does that mean?’

Her voice when it came was still soft, but cold and spiked.

‘It means I think sometimes that I’m making the same mistake my sisters made. Marrying weak men. My mother always said that we would never be happy together. I think she might have been right.’

She was breathing heavily, twisting the soft cotton nightie into a ball. Marcus still wouldn’t look at her. She tried to take his hand, but he drew it away.

‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean it. I love you. That’s my problem, I just love you so much. And I need for us to be together, for us to have a child. I’ll try very hard to make things better for you.’

But Marcus was already gone. Whenever they argued like this he would retreat into himself, draw up his defences and become as still and silent as a monk, lost to Abby.

‘Don’t do this, please don’t do this. Speak to me. What are you thinking?’ He sat immobile as she stroked his hair. Abby began to cry, large hot tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘Why are you crying?’ he asked, his voice very cold.

She looked down at him as she stood, her nightie clutched to her chest. ‘Because you’re not,’ she said, and ran from the room. She slammed the door as she left.

Marcus sat on the bed and watched the windows of the high Edwardian houses opposite. Scattered yellow squares of light glowed against the dim white walls like the doors of an advent calendar. A train rattled somewhere. When he went to look for Abby he found her sitting very still on the sofa, her nightie on, the main lights in the room casting her shadow on the wall behind her. Marcus sat down next to her and placed a kiss on her wrinkled brow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ She turned to him and draped her arms around his shoulders. He felt her hot breath on the skin of his neck.

‘All I want is for you to be happy. I know I haven’t always been there for you, but this time I am. We’re going to make a baby, and you’ll be an amazing mother. And I’ll love the baby all the more because half of it is you.’

‘Oh, darling,’ she said, and pressed her wet face into the hollow of his neck.

They made their way back to the bed in the spare room. A bird was singing somewhere in the darkness outside the window. They slept tightly curled together that night as they had done when they shared his single bed at university, and he fell asleep with the beating of her heart thumping against his cheek, the words of a prayer circling his mind. Don’t let me die just yet, Lord. I don’t want to die.

This girl was very good. Mouse liked her expressionless face, the clinical air she had about her. Once he had walked out without speaking to the masseuse. There had been a lasciviousness in the way she greeted him, something sluttish in her clothing and smile, something that suggested she was open to going further than a massage. But this one clearly understood what he was looking for. When her fingers rested on his perineum, he allowed himself a brief sigh of contentment, encouraging her to stay there. She was naked. There was a long mirror down one wall of the room and he watched her breasts move as she ran her hands up the inside of his thighs. Dark nipples. She sucked her lip in concentration. She looked a little like Lee. Brown hair but the same sense of seriousness. He thought she was Swedish, but didn’t want to ask.