High society (21 page)

SAMANTHA’S FLAT, ISLINGTON

Y
ou don’t have to use a condom, Peter. I don’t mind. I want to share everything with you. You know that. Even your fate.’

‘Don’t be silly, Sammy.’

She was wearing the lingerie he had bought her at the beginning. His first present. That seemed rather a long time ago to Peter now.

‘What is so silly about being prepared to die with someone?’

‘It’s silly if it’s entirely unnecessary. Besides, this is just a precaution. It’s been nearly six weeks now and Robert Nunn is still testing clean, as am I. My chances improve on each day of negative testing. You know that the doctor said she has every reason to hope that I’ll soon be in the clear.’

‘I hardly know what the doctor says, seeing as I’m excluded from her interviews.’

‘Come on, Sam. You know that there’s no way I could explain to Angela why I’d think it necessary for my parliamentary assistant to attend intimate medical interviews.’

‘Yes, there is. Of course there is.’

‘Perhaps you could explain it to me.’

Samantha knelt up in the bed, looking as gorgeous as she had ever done, her skin taut, her breasts youthful and proud, and yet Peter could feel his passion ebbing away as she spoke.

‘You could tell her that you’re in love with me and I’m in love with you and that we make love every chance we get and that if you ever did love her, which I doubt, she has forfeited any claim to that love or any place in your life at all by failing to satisfy and maintain your love.’

Peter drew breath and looked Samantha in the eye with what he hoped was a look of fraternal affection tinged with a little romantic anguish. He had been waiting for this moment for weeks, the moment when he must somehow find a way gently to begin the process of disengagement. He wished that she were not nearly naked. ‘Sammy, please…We have to talk.’

‘Isn’t this talking?’

‘We have to talk about…well, we have to be practical. Our affair…’

‘Affair? Is that what you call it?’

‘Well…I suppose…’

‘Is that what we’re doing now? Having an affair?’

‘Well…yes, of course…A love affair. A wonderful love affair. But it’s only been going a few months, and you’re very, very young. We don’t want to rush things, do we?’

‘You didn’t mind rushing things that first time in your office! You just about tore my knickers off.’

As Peter remembered it they had torn them off together, but he knew better than to argue the point. Samantha was being much more confrontational than he had expected. ‘I know I did, Sammy, and it was the most beautiful and passionate thing — ’

‘So it was all right to rush into having sex, then?’

‘Well, it was, it was…something that happened, wasn’t it? Something wonderful.’

‘Fine, OK. So what is it that we mustn’t rush into?’

‘Um…I think what I mean is — ’

‘Mustn’t rush into me being anything more to you than a convenient screw? Is that what you don’t want to rush into, Peter?’

He had not expected the conversation to be easy. That at least he had got right. ‘Sammy! Please. You’re not letting me finish — ’

‘Well, go on, then. Finish. Take your time. We wouldn’t want to rush anything, would we?’

‘Look, Samantha, you’re taking this all wrong. Of course I don’t see our relationship as just convenient sex. My God, it’s scarcely convenient, is it? And I’m very fond of you, as you know. Very, very fond.’

‘Fond? What a small word.’

‘What’s small about fond? I’m fond of my children, I’m fond of my parents.’

‘Fond of your wife?’

‘Of course I am, Sammy. Would you respect me if I wasn’t?’

‘What’s respect got to do with anything? I’m in love with you.’

‘You think you are, Sammy, and that’s so very wonderful, but you’re young, you have so much love to — ’

‘Don’t you love me, then?’

‘Of course I love you, of course. But love is, well, love is lots of things, isn’t it? And our love is…our love is, well, it’s very new and — ’

‘This ‘affair’ we’re having, Peter. Where d’you think it’s going?’

‘Well, I…Sammy, you’re in politics as much as I am. You know that we can’t always have everything we want — ’

‘Where d’you think it’s going?’

‘As I’m trying to explain — ’

‘So you think it’s going nowhere?’

Peter knew that he must tread carefully. There was to be no easy exit. However he disengaged himself, it would take time and great tact. He had not lied when he had said that he was fond of Samantha. He was, and it pained him to see her so hurt.

‘Of course it’s going somewhere, Sammy. I love you, I’ve told you that…but we have an important job to do and we can’t afford to let it be derailed by silly scandal. I’m winning at the moment, Sam. We’re both winning, you and I. I mean really winning.’

‘You mean your career is going well.’

‘That’s not fair! I mean the issue we both care about. The nation’s mindset is changing. Even the Cabinet is wavering. I’m not saying that the PM’s going to suddenly turn round and start supporting full legalization, but at least they’re finally having to talk about it. They don’t know what to think any more. We’ve opened people’s minds. You and I, together.’

Samantha’s eyes were far away. Something inside her had changed. It had happened in an instant, one sudden, heartbreaking, revelatory moment. Just as Angela Paget had come to know of her husband’s affair by a simple and sudden instinct, so did Samantha realize that Peter Paget was going to put his career before her.

He was never going to leave his wife. Of course she should have known from the beginning. How silly she had been.

‘Fond?’ she murmured.

‘Oh, please, Samantha. It’s a perfectly reasonable word. It means love. I love you.’

‘ ‘Fond of you. People who are in love are not ‘fond’ of each other.’

‘Yes, they are! Or in my case they are. Look, I take the word back, I — ’

‘ ‘Fond’ is what he said.’

‘What who said?’

‘ ‘I’m very, very fond of you,’ he said. We were in bed at the time, just as you and I are now. Funny, that.’

‘Who? Who said that he was very fond of you?’

‘The man I told you about, at Cambridge, the lecturer, Politics and Modern History, you remember.’

‘Oh yes. You had a fling with him.’

‘Is that what we’re having, then? A fling?’

‘No! For heaven’s sake, Samantha. Suddenly you’re picking up on my every word. Don’t twist things. It’s just that you said — ’

‘It doesn’t matter what I said. I was in love with him.’

‘You told me you only made love twice.’

‘Is sex so central to your existence? Is that the only benchmark to measure the depth of a relationship? How many times you do it? I was in love with him before ever I let him at me, just as I was in love with you before we did it!’

‘ ‘Let him at me’? ‘Before we did it’? If we’re dwelling on choice of language I might well ask if that’s how you care to describe your sex life? You make it sound like a duty.’

‘Well, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘Oh, Peter, do try for a moment to think of someone other than yourself. Imagine what it’s like for me. I finally meet a man I can love. A man I can look up to, who I worship, who can teach me, be my guide. And all the time all he wants to do is paw me and invade me like some horny schoolboy.’

Peter was taken aback. He had thought himself in control of the conversation. It wasn’t easy, but at least he’d felt in charge, in as much as at least he felt that he understood Samantha’s feelings better than she understood his. Now he was not sure at all. ‘Sammy, do you mean me? Do you mean us?’

‘Of course. How many men do you think I’ve been worshipping lately? Hundreds? I love you. You know that. I’m not fucking ‘fond’ of you. I love you.’

Samantha very rarely swore.

‘But, what’s all this about horny schoolboys? You said you loved our sex. You said that I understood a woman’s body.’

‘Can’t you recognize a line when you hear one? I thought you were a politician.’

‘A line?’

‘Yes, a line to flatter you. To please you.’

‘Please me!’

‘I don’t like sex, Peter, I never have. It’s better with E, but basically I don’t like it. Men are pathetic the way they obsess about it. Pathetic. My father wasn’t pathetic.’

‘What’s your bloody father got to do with it?’

‘According to my therapist, everything.’

‘Your therapist!’

‘Yes, my therapist. He says I’m in love with my father. He says that you’re just a replacement figure.’

‘You’ve told your therapist about us!’

‘Don’t worry about your precious career. He’s not allowed to say anything. Professional confidence.’

Peter sat naked on the bed, trying to assimilate the sudden and complete fracturing of his happy lovenest. He knew very well that unless carefully handled, the consequences of this conversation for his life and his career would be very serious indeed. Samantha was not the steady, confident girl he had imagined her to be at all. She was an emotional flake. A dangerous woman. He had suspected it since even before his accident, since first she had mentioned burning poems at specific times of the day. Now he knew for sure. She was an emotional loose cannon and he would have to disengage from her with the utmost delicacy or she would turn into what he had heard called a bunny-boiler. It was Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction who had first put the fear of God into adulterous men, and if Samantha really had been lying about sex all this time then she was probably mad enough to cook the odd pet.

‘What about the orgasms?’ Peter asked, and despite his general fears there was a tone of wounded male pride in the inquiry. ‘You said I made you have wonderful orgasms.’

‘Faked.’

‘Faked!’

‘Every single one.’

‘But…Why?’

‘I’ve told you. To please you. It was what you wanted to hear, so I let you hear it. Sex is the price I pay for everything else I have with you.’

Seldom had conversational goalposts moved so quickly. Peter was truly shocked. ‘Well…Well, I don’t know what to say. I suppose I shan’t be needing this, then.’ He removed the condom, which had been slipping off anyway and was scarcely an inspiring sight. Then suddenly Samantha’s expression changed completely. The hard, almost spiteful look she had assumed almost from the beginning of the conversation disappeared. In an instant there were tears pouring down her cheeks.

‘Oh, Peter, please…I didn’t mean it! Really, I didn’t. I was just trying to hurt you, that’s all. I love you, Peter, and I love to make love to you. Screw me now, come on, please, I want it, I really do.’

And just as surely as she had been seeming to distance herself from him, Samantha fell upon Peter, pulling his face towards her, thrusting her body against his.

‘You were lying? About the orgasms?’ Peter asked through the rich, fat kisses that she was working into his mouth.

‘Yes, yes! You make me come like a freight train! Like fireworks, bombs! I was lying. You make my whole body melt. Let me show you.’

It was all too much for Peter. He succumbed almost immediately. She was so firm, so young, so very, very sexy, and if she was faking her lust she was a very good actress…But then again she was in politics.

Afterwards Peter remembered that he had not used his condom and a sick feeling gripped his stomach. Supposing he was infected and he had infected her, then their affair really must become public…On the other hand, if he were infected with Aids, would he care? Peter fought down the rising fear just as he had done many times over the previous weeks. He would be all right.

He was not infected.

He could handle Samantha.

He would gently disengage from her while retaining her loyalty, and he would continue with his newly splendid career. Who knew? Perhaps they could even retain an occasional sexual side to their relationship. That would be nice.

Samantha was also in a reflective mood. ‘That college professor,’ she mused quietly. ‘You know, the one I was telling you about? He ended up having to move from the university to the local technical college. But he didn’t love me, you see, and it isn’t so easy these days for deceitful old men to toy with young women’s emotions.’

A BROTHEL, BIRMINGHAM

T
he girl above was ten years old. Her smile shone out like a beacon of hope, her eyes flashed with such energy and promise that people felt happier about themselves merely standing in her gaze. Here was a life on the brink of splendid things, a life force ready to illuminate any world it chose to conquer.

The girl below was a hundred if she was a day. A century’s worth of pain had dulled her sparkling eyes and sunk them in their sockets like two small graves.

The girl above had freckles on her nose, rosy cheeks and ribbons in her shiny, red-flashed chestnut hair.

The girl below was ghostly white and sickly. Light as air. Her ribs showed through her pale skin. She had not menstruated for six months.

The girl above was ten years old.

The girl below thought that she was probably not yet eighteen.

‘Think of the sunshine, Jessie, remember the sunshine. We used tae love the sun.’

‘The sun never shines in Scotland, Jessie.’

‘Yes it does, it shone on us. Remember, the display? Three handsprings an’ a full flying somersault. Flip flip flip whoosh! And everybody cheered! We were on after the fire brigade and before the brass band, and then we were in the band too! We threw our marching uniform on over our leotard and played ‘Scotland the Brave’ and ‘Ali’s Tartan Army’! Remember the crowd, Jessie? Remember the sun? It shone on our coronet and on our epaulets. Hold on, Jessie! Hold on! It can shine on us again.’

AN OXFAM SHOP, WEST BROMWICH

W
hen Ah awoke after the first sleep Ah’d had in some time Ah knew that Ah was through the worst. Ah knew that Ah was clean for the first time in many months and that if Ah had any chance o’ survival, that chance was now. And so Ah set about makin’ ma plan o’ escape. Ah knew that there was no way o’ gettin’ out the front door, it was locked and barred an’ a madam sat there twenty-four-seven with a couple o’ the boys loungin’ wi’ her. Some o’ the rooms where we took the clients had windows, but they were screwed down tight. Ah reckoned that the only way out was through the skylight in our attic.

‘Mornin’ times we was often left pretty much alone up there, an’ Ah resolved tae have a go the followin’ day. Ah would ha’ gone there and then but Ah’d slept too long and it was time taste go tae work. As Ah trooped down those stairs tae ma wee shag gin’ room Ah swore that it would be the last time Ah’d make that journey. Ah swore that Ah’d be out o’ that house or else die in the attempt.

‘Well, somehow Ah makes it through the next twelve hours an’ once we’re all back upstairs again Ah waste no time. Of course the skylight was bolted shut like all the other windows in the house. Ah’d have to break the glass. Ah turfed poor Andie out o’ the bottom o’ our bunk bed and dragged it tae beneath the skylight. I reckoned there’d be less noise if the glass could fall ontae the top mattress. The other girls all just watched me with a kind o’ stupefied fascination as Ah gets up ontae the bunk, wraps a blanket round ma fist and waits for the next car tae come by in the street below with its windows down and its drum and bass cranked up big time. Sure enough, it wasnae long before the usual booming fills the air. Yo motherfucker! Yo what motherfucker! Yo bad motherfucker! And as it gets real close I smash ma fist at the glass in order tae break it, which is no’ so easy as it sounds, in fact. Ma first blow cracks the glass but no’ much more than that, so’s Ah have tae wait for the next street disc jockey tae cruise by. It’s agony, Ah can tell ye. Me thinkin’ that maybe one o’ the boys has heard the crack or mebbe one o’ the girls will freak out and scream. But neither o’ those things happened and after three more efforts Ah’d cleared out all the glass from the opening and was ready tae do ma runner. ‘Ah’m off out o’ here,’ Ah says tae the girls. ‘Anybody comin’?’ But o’ course none o’ them dared, because they were all too monged. Jus’ like Ah could never ha’ done it if not for the week Ah’d just spent detoxing. ‘Right then. See yeze,’ Ah said, and I’m up ontae the roof leaving the girls wi’ a hole in their ceiling wi’ the rain pissing through it.

‘Well, the first thing Ah does is slip on the tiles, o’ course. The weather was terrible and those tiles were fifty years old. There was moss and bird shite and anyway it was just like a film, ‘cos Ah’m slidin’ doon the roof, heading for the precipice. Ah’m in ma best practical clothes, selected specially for ma great escape: white wetlook plastic mini and pink spandex halterneck boobtube. Ah had shoes, white stilettos, o’ course, but Ah’ve had the sense taste tie them round ma neck wi’ a couple o’ rubber johnnies, so Ah’m in ma bare feet. Honest, that’s the best Ah could do for an escape kit, the most practical clothes available tae me. Ah reckoned that I’d stand even less chance in a frilly G-string an’ a leather bra wi’ holes cut out for the nipples. Anyways, Ah’m slidin’ doon this steep roof wi’ a gutter an’ a ledge opening out in front o’ me an’ Ah’m thinkin’, ‘Fine, this is me checkin’ out…except mebbe if…’

Ah could just get tae that chimneystack…‘ ‘Cos even as Ah slithered an’ scrambled for a hold Ah could see that if Ah were only descending about three feet along the roof to ma left Ah’d bang slap intae a big pile o’ bricks. Well, what do ye know, but all in a moment Ah applies sledging rules, the same rules o’ steering that Ah was such a master of when toboganning during ma real life. The trick with a sledge is tae drag your foot on the side that you want tae turn, ‘cos it’ll slow ye down and ye’ll drift that way. A lot of kids instinctively wanted tae bung down the opposite foot, like in a boat ye turn by rowing harder on the other side. But me, Ah always had a feel for it and could guide a sledge round every bump. Well, tumbling down that roof Ah manages tae stick ma hand an’ leg doon on ma right side and sure enough Ah sort of slewed across the tiles that way and came tae rest against that chimneystack, bashing ma head somethin’ rotten in the process.

‘So now Ah catch ma breath, and take stock for a moment. Ah’m almost naked in the pissing rain, Ah’ve taken all the skin offa ma right hand and knee, and I’m stuck on the roof o’ a five-storey detached townhouse full o’ men who will shortly be fixing tae murda me. But Ah’m free, for that moment at least Ah’m free, and as Ah look up intae the rain-swept wind and at the great grey clouds hurtling across the sky Ah want to scream for joy.’