A Wayward Game (22 page)

“Do you think
you can hold me? Support my weight?” I ask.

“Yes,
Mistress.”

“Good. Pick me
up.”

He slips one
arm under my buttocks and the other around my waist, and lifts me
up easily. I brace myself against the cross, taking some of the
weight, and wrap my legs around him. And then, for the first time
since childhood perhaps, I experience what it is like to be carried
and supported in another person’s arms. It’s such a simple thing,
and yet so profound; it’s an expression of absolute trust and
dependence. I wind my arms around his neck and lean my forehead
against his. Our eyes meet, and there is something new and strange
in the look we exchange.

His cock slides
inside me easily, filling me, and he begins to move, thrusting up
into me. He holds me easily, without any obvious strain; he is
stronger than he looks, stronger than I realised. And now I don’t
feel like a Domina. Now I feel like any woman with her lover,
revelling only in
this
: the simple feeling of him inside me,
his skin brushing against mine, the contrast between his hard,
muscular body and the softness of mine. Above all, I want to feel
that there is more to this than our bodies, more than just sex.

And then, when
I remember how many barriers stand between us, my hot desire turns
to cold ashes, even as Neil cries out in triumphant pleasure.

Satis
.
Enough.

We drew our
inspiration from
Great Expectations
, a mutual favourite,
which Neil was re-reading around the time we first met. Miss
Havisham, living in self-imposed exile in Satis House, has had
enough of the world, enough of life, enough of love. Trapped and
suspended in time, she lives in the past, surrounded by the
decaying remnants of her abortive wedding day. Belonging to the
past, though, does not diminish her power in the present; memories
of the man who betrayed her lead her to plot revenge against all
men.

Neil was about
twelve or thirteen when he first read the book, as part of his
English schoolwork. It was when he read about Estella, the
beautiful, haughty vessel of Miss Havisham’s revenge, that he felt
the first faint stirring of submissiveness. He did not understand
it as such at the time, of course. Aged twelve, he could hardly be
expected to fathom why reading about a boy’s torment and
humiliation at the hands of a girl should excite him so.

“I thought
there must be something wrong with me,” he says now, lying on the
bed. “I just didn’t get it, couldn’t wrap my head around it. It’d
be years before I really began to understand, and even longer
before I stopped denying it, even to myself. And by then, of
course, I was married. Trapped, just like Miss Havisham. Ironic,
really. If she knew what she’d escaped from on her wedding day,
she’d have thanked her lucky stars.”

The bitterness
in his voice makes me uncomfortable, even though I understand it.
My own history of failed affairs has led me to view marriage as a
tragicomic farce, a sort of socially acceptable masochism. This is
the way it goes: one day, usually when you’re young and stupid, you
meet someone equally young and stupid, and something just fits.
Your body betrays you. He or she affects you as no one else ever
has, and your feelings are like a fever or madness, and beautiful
while they last. And Nature, seeing an opportunity for propagation,
tries any number of feints and frauds to get Her way. Illusions –
love, kinship, forever – become sustenance. You’re starving, and
fantasy is your food. And so you get married, and everyone
congratulates you, and then you move into a little house in the
suburbs together and have a couple of kids, and everyone’s happy
for you because that’s the done thing, that’s what you’re supposed
to do.

And then, one
day – a few years later, perhaps – you wake up one morning and
everything you once felt is dead, and the person waking up beside
you and stretching and yawning is a stranger. And in the wake of
that bleak, panicky feeling comes a terrifying thought: that you’ve
thrown your life away for a fantasy. What happens next, of course,
varies. If you’re lucky, you’ll get divorced. If you’re not, you’ll
stay married, and it will be like spending the rest of your life in
an empty, untidy room after a party’s ended: lonely, quiet, and
surrounded by the detritus of a few happy hours.

That is Neil’s
situation, and he deals with it by trying to forget about it. When
we are together, time stops. The rooms in which we play our games
are our own version of Satis House: a place apart, where the clocks
have stopped and time stands still. But time, of course, never
really stands still: outside these walls, it ticks inexorably
onwards. Neil rarely talks of his marriage now, or of any decisions
that might have been made about it. If he remains in the tomb of
this dead love, how will he survive? How can he continue to live
with someone he doesn’t love? I know that loneliness, and it’s the
worst loneliness of all. And how will he live with the desires that
continue to taunt him? His wife will never satisfy them.

“I tried to
mention it once,” he once told me. “Back in the early days, when I
still thought we could make each other happy. I did it casually,
you know, just to see how she’d react. God, you should have seen
the look on her face! Absolute disgust. I had to laugh it off,
pretend I was kidding. I don’t think she was amused. I’m not sure
she really believed that it was a joke, either; or, if she did, she
thought it was in pretty poor taste.”

I think of his
wife. From the little he’s told me of her, I’m fairly sure that
she’s no fool. She must have guessed, just as she must have
realised by now that there’s somebody else in Neil’s life. Does she
care? Perhaps she has someone else, too. And what if their marriage
collapses? Will there be anything left over for us? How could there
be, when I can’t even trust him? These are questions to which I
have no answers, and they haunt me. This is not something that we
were prepared for, after all. Our affair began as entertainment,
our ground rule being that lust was not to be confounded by
obligations or expectations. And that habit is hard to break – even
now, when things have changed utterly.

Neil is silent,
staring up at the ceiling. I want to feel closer to him, and run my
hand over the hair on his chest. He turns his head to look at me,
and gives a tight smile that betrays his anxiety.

“What are you
thinking of?” I ask, though I’m aware of what a stupid question it
is. What is happening inside another person’s mind is no one else’s
business. Even if they want to share it, they often cannot:
sometimes thoughts fly like birds when interrupted, and sometimes
they cannot be put into the cage of words.

He hesitates,
and his hand closes over mine, over his heart.

“I’m thinking
about you,” he says unexpectedly. “I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t have
to worry about me, Neil.”

“Don’t I? I’m
not so sure about that.” He sighs, and looks back at the ceiling.
“It’s funny, you know. You tell me not to be ashamed, but you’re
always ashamed on your own account. You’re ashamed of being human,
of having feelings. Sometimes your defences are lowered, though,
and I get a feeling for the real person inside. That happened this
evening. I felt it. Something in you just switched off, or switched
on. Suddenly you weren’t dominant anymore.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“God, you don’t
have to apologise. I like to feel that I’m seeing the real person.
And even if I didn’t, you don’t exist just to fulfil my
fantasies.”

“I don’t want
to destroy them either.”

“You haven’t.
You’ve just added a new layer to them, that’s all.” He looks at me
again, and smiles. “It really doesn’t bother me, you know, to think
that you’re just a human being. In fact, I’d like you a lot less if
I thought otherwise.”

I kiss him on
the lips, very lightly. He puts his hand on the back of my head and
pulls me closer, and begins to kiss me back. It’s a tender kiss,
the kind of kiss that is exchanged by lovers. Yet how can there be
love unless there is trust? What really lies behind those kisses?
Just another game? – a much more dangerous, much more frightening
game? I don’t know. And allowing this to continue, and leaving
myself open to every possible betrayal, is the most risky, most
potentially harmful, thing I have ever done with this man.

Neil is
sleeping quietly, undisturbed by dreams and reality alike. This is
the second night we have spent together, sleeping in the same bed,
doing all the things that normal couples supposedly do. It feels
strange to us; we are still at that stage when we’re trying to get
to know each other, and we frequently feel awkward and unsure of
ourselves. And yet these have been amongst the happiest days and
nights of my life.

They have also
been amongst the most difficult. The questions posed by my
encounter with Mr Walsh swirl relentlessly in my brain, and they
have not yet been answered. I wonder whether I am the victim of
some elaborate and heartless game here, and whether I am putting
myself in danger. And yet I go on living beside Neil, sleeping with
him, and pretending that all is well.

Sleeping in the
same bed as someone else is not necessarily sexual, but it is
always intimate. You are at your most vulnerable in sleep. You
dream, mumble unguarded words, and are prey to the physical
frailties of snoring and drooling, all the things that have no
place in our idealised versions of ourselves. You are also
physically vulnerable, open to any threat. Sleeping beside someone
is an affirmation of trust and affection, or at least should be.
That is why unhappy couples move to separate beds, even as new
lovers seek every opportunity to share their beds. And Neil and I
are, I suppose, new lovers – in a sense, at least. Physical
intimacy is not new to us, but emotional intimacy is.

Neil fell
asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, and is now
lying on his back, snoring lightly. I, however, cannot drift off
into sleep, however much I wish to. At last, in the early hours, I
give in, get up, and creep out of the bedroom. Half-past three,
according to the clock, and all the world is silent. Lonely hours,
but I love them. Even in London, it is quiet; the world seems
strangely muted and softened. I go to the living room window, draw
aside the curtain, and look out into the street. There is nobody
there now, nobody lurking in the shadows, and no waiting car; only
the flickering glow of a streetlamp, a glaring neon light in a shop
window, and scraps of rubbish. If Neil is right, and someone really
is watching me, there is no sign of him at this hour. Even spies, I
suppose, have to sleep.

I sit down on
the sofa, put on some headphones, and begin to listen to Corelli’s
Concerto Grosso
. The music is perfect, as intricate as a
puzzle box, almost mathematical in its precision – the kind of
music in which everything is assigned to its proper place, and
nothing jars. A perfect choice, when you need to think clearly. As
the music weaves through my brain and soothes my nerves, I lie back
on the sofa and think, reviewing my situation. I feel, as I have
for weeks, that somehow this situation is coming to a crisis.
Curiously, the thought does not frighten me greatly; it is almost a
relief to think that, one way or another, things will soon be
resolved. For too long I have felt trapped, incapable of moving
either forward or back, and anything that occurs to break this
deadlock will be welcome.

Of course, the
question of what exactly
will
happen is one that I can’t
help considering. I have been watching Sallow, testing his story,
trying to pick holes in it. More to the point, he probably knows
what I have been doing. Sallow has private investigators working
for him, and it would in any case take only a basic internet search
to reveal that Katherine Argyle, the journalist whose career was
wrecked after she wrote a supposedly libellous article on the Diane
Meath-Jones case, is the same Katherine Argyle who studied
alongside Diane, and lived in the same Hall of Residence as her. I
think of all the electronic detritus I have left behind in
cyberspace over the years: old CVs, pen portraits and quick
biographical sketches, articles, Facebook updates, tweets and blog
posts. A virtual trail that reveals, perhaps, far more than I ever
intended it to. Sallow might not know the exact nature of my
relationship with Diane – she would never have told him, certainly
– but he might have other sources of information. And – the thought
chills me – now that Neil knows, who else might find out? Besides,
Diane might have mentioned me in passing, or said that we were
friends. I met her several times even after she got together with
Sallow, after all; even when our affair was over, we remained
friends.

I close my
eyes, and allow memories to wash over me. Some are faded, washed
out like old clothes. Others are so intact that I can almost
imagine that time has turned back on itself, or that it never moved
on at all.

Diane is
sitting opposite me in the busy London coffee shop, picking at a
sandwich. She is not pregnant yet, but James Sallow has already
entered her life, and his power over her is growing. She is still
working in her research job, and is dressed smartly, like a
businesswoman: a grey trouser suit, a red silk top, and red shoes.
Everything is obviously expensive, designed to convey wealth and
good taste. Her brown hair is cut into a sharp bob, and
straightened. This is everything that she has wanted and worked for
from the time she was an impoverished teenager, I know; and yet I
also think that I am seeing a compromised Diane, who has adopted so
much of other people’s preferences and ways that she has almost
forgotten who she really is. Sallow’s influence? She is quick to
deny it.