Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

‘Would you mind if I just watched?’ she asked Jerome.

‘Watch the three of us?’ said Jerome eagerly. ‘That’s cool.’

‘Or the two of them,’ said Karen, trying to protect Stan from Jerome’s competition, or worse still his contribution.

‘I’m not the one who’s dropping out,’ said Jerome. ‘It’s up to us to satisfy this sexually devouring woman,’ he said to Stan. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘Well, gee,’ said Stan, ‘I don’t want Karen to feel left out.’

‘She likes to watch,’ growled Sabine. ‘Everybody can do their own thing.’

She reached inside Stan’s white pyjamas and wrapped her fingers around his unconcerned cock.

‘I’m not sure what my thing is,’ said Stan. ‘But, right now, I think I’d like to be with my wife.’

‘You could watch us,’ said Jerome, leaping astride Sabine’s writhing body.

‘We’ll just go out on the balcony,’ said Karen discreetly. ‘You make yourselves at home.’

‘This is stupid ,’ shouted Sabine, banging the mattress with her fists. ‘We might as well be in our own room.’

‘That’s what I’ve been saying all along,’ said Jerome.

Sabine leapt to her feet, and Jerome hastily gathered up his clothes and turned to say goodbye.

‘We’ll see you guys tomorrow,’ he said cheerfully.

Karen and Stan remained silent while Sabine strode proudly out of the room, and Jerome shuffled through the door with a presidential wave.

‘I guess we’ll never have group sex now,’ said Stan with a touch of melancholy.

‘We could start a group of our own,’ said Karen. ‘Let’s talk to Walking Eagle about it.’

‘He’s bound to have a ceremony,’ said Stan.

‘No doubt about it,’ said Karen.

* * *

Brooke had fallen asleep and was dreaming that the sea was an oriental merchant unrolling bolts of lace at her feet, and with every wave she bought another acre of lace because each pattern was too beautiful to refuse. And then he said he had some silk to show her, and she agreed, and he pointed behind him and the whole ocean was stretched silk. She said she would take the whole thing, but he laughed and said it was not for sale. Couldn’t he make her a little dress? she asked. Not even a handkerchief? Nothing? And at that moment all the bolts of lace streamed back into the ocean, and the silk turned into churning sea water and it rushed over her naked body and she was completely free.

Kenneth was standing on the balcony feeling exhilarated and distinguished when Brooke came over to join him.

‘I’ve just had the most beautiful dream and I know I have to give away all of my money,’ said Brooke sleepily.

‘Make a foundation,’ said Kenneth.

‘OK, darling,’ yawned Brooke. ‘But anyhow, I don’t need any new dresses.’

‘We can make that one of the terms and conditions of the foundation: no new dresses for the director.’

Brooke hooked her hand over his shoulder and rested her head on his chest.

‘The ocean looks like silk, but the wonderful thing about it is that it’s the ocean.’

‘That’s right,’ said Kenneth.

‘And lightning is lightning, and sperm is…’ She paused.

‘Don’t say holy water,’ said Kenneth. ‘Don’t give up on me now.’

‘I wasn’t going to say holy water,’ said Brooke. ‘I was going to say, yummy.’

‘Yummy is OK,’ said Kenneth. ‘Yummy is allowed.’

* * *

Peter lay on the bed, completely still, listening to the whispering sea. An intermittent draught cooled the sweat on his skin. He was immersed in the richness of his own body and yet barely in touch with the bed. He could feel his body coursing with blood and enzymes and glandular excretions and, at the same time, feel nourished by the pulse of the faintest star.

He saw all the causes from the unknowable edges of time which, for all he knew, had no edges, converging on his body in that moment to make it no other than it was. And then he saw that his body was itself a cause dispersing its effects into the future. He saw time rippling in and, caught in the revolution of a moment, rippling out again. History and all possible futures were just the interference pattern of those converging and diverging waves of causality. And then he saw that what rippled in and what rippled out were the same thing, because his body was no more focal than any other point and this moment was no more focal than any other moment. It was as true to call the stillness rippling as to call the rippling stillness, or the stillness stillness, or the rippling rippling …

‘Far out,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ whispered Crystal.

‘I’ve seen how the whole thing works.’

‘What? The yoni and the lingam ?’ said Crystal. ‘You didn’t know that before?’

Peter laughed. ‘No. The universe,’ he said.

‘Oh, the universe,’ said Crystal, relieved. ‘Sabine’s favourite subject.’

‘Now you’ve ruined my mystical experience,’ said Peter.

‘It was that easy? It just disappeared at the mention of a woman you don’t like as much as you used to?’

‘Yup,’ said Peter. ‘I guess we’re going to have to painstakingly reconstruct the moments that led up to it.’

‘That never works,’ said Crystal. ‘We’ll have to approach it from a new angle.’

Infolding and outfolding at the same time. She smiled as the phrase returned to her from Jean-Paul’s letter.

Leaning forward she sucked one of Peter’s nipples. The sensation pierced and soothed him like a hummingbird.

Crystal knelt astride him and held his face between her cupped hands.

‘A new angle,’ she repeated, her knees spreading outwards and backwards as she slid down the sheets to join him.

EDWARD ST. AUBYN lives in London with his two children. He is the author of The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and the final volume of that series, At Last. Mother’s Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2006. His most recent novel, Lost for Words, was published in May 2014.