Her Hungry Heart (26 page)

‘Then stay with him, and if you’re not going to have my child, have his.’

‘Maybe I don’t want children.’

‘Obviously you don’t want children, but think about it.
Maybe till now you had a lot of reasons not to have children, but that’s changed.’

‘How do you know that? What do you know about me?’

Rick felt her anger. It had never been his intention to upset Mimi. He knew he was some sort of catalyst for her, and that he evoked in her the child that had never been. She could play with him as she had never played as a child, but she could also be a woman, one with a sexual hunger that she was not afraid to reveal to him. Rick was able to trigger something in Mimi that allowed her to enjoy sex as she rarely had as a young woman or even as an adult. It seemed to him a natural progression for her now to want to understand the miracle of giving birth, of creating an image of herself and her lover or Jay in another human being. To see a child enter the world, the flesh and bones of two other human beings. How could he make her understand how sad it would be if there was not going to be another generation of Mimis? That she had hardly contemplated it came as no surprise to him, but this was not the same Mimi as the woman he had watched for a few weeks on the island of Patmos two years before. He had changed her life, and he was not at all ashamed of having added something to it. He had done it because he loved her, first from afar, and even more so once he had had her.

‘Mimi,’ he told her, ‘this is a different age from the one you were brought up in, the world of your teens and early twenties. An age when love and passion are as valid as the bonds of marriage. Where illegitimate children no longer exist, just one-parent children, or couples who live together, unmarried, with a child born of free love. Mimi, you have choices you never thought existed. Why should you be deprived of enjoying a child unless it’s because of some fear from the past that need no longer exist? Just think about it, Mimi. Talk to Jay.’

‘You’ve managed to confuse me. When I talk to you, I forget who I am, I forget the ten-year difference between us.
My life, every day in my life, is full and rich and rewarding. To have children? A purely selfish act, unless you are prepared to make a child the first priority in your life. I suffered from not being the priority of two terrific, exciting parents. I wouldn’t want to do that to a child.’ She was stunned to hear those words come out of her mouth. Had she been carrying that belief all her life? She must have been. It quite shocked her. Yet, having voiced it she felt some sort of relief, as if she had been carrying a large boulder around for ever and had now dropped it. Rick might be her lover, but she thought of Cary that night at her house when she had seen him as some kind of miracle-worker, a healer. Was he her healer, too, the only person to recognize she was ill? For she never had.

‘Mimi, don’t talk about this now. You’re going to talk it to death. You’ve analysed it, talked about it in your head. Maybe it’s been in your psyche for years and you killed it long ago. I’m offering you something new and fresh, a new life, a child to love and play with, someone to add to your life and share it with.’

‘Don’t go on.’

‘Okay, I’ve said all I have to say.’ He did not mention it again.

They spent the night together, not leaving that lovely bedroom in the pretty house in Sutton Place. They lay in bed and Mimi listened to him talk about his adventures. It was all much more than the perfect wave, more than the surfer who was a brain surgeon. He was a true original and a rolling stone. She wanted him and what he represented, but she wanted the stability, the security, of Jay. Rick’s way of life was marvellous, child’s play, but her marriage gave her something as desirable.

She was starved of passion, hungry for uninhibited sexual ecstasy, things that she had with Rick. But she was of another generation, of another time when values were different. No matter how much she could change, there was
a history of thinking and maturity developed in the hard realities of an ugly world. Blond boys, beach bums from Malibu, with all their East Coast education and skills, were players who knew only how to roll the dice in favour of fun. Their time to grow up would come. Mimi would be old when they came into their prime, long past her own.

He was licking her fingers, running his tongue over her hand. He was almost eating her flesh. His eyes declared her succulent. Then she took his testicles in her mouth, licked them and rolled them around with her tongue. Cupping his penis in her hands, she caressed it, hand over hand. She could think of no pleasure greater than to have a love-child created from extreme sexual ardour with Rick. That made sense to her now. What had blinded her from seeing that before? She sucked her lover deep, and thought about her husband’s sons. What a joy they were to Jay and her, what pleasure she derived from the company of his boys. Why hadn’t she thought of it herself? A child created in a moment of passion, in an excess of lust. What better way? And he had been right, her rolling stone. She could deal with being a mother only when she became a mother. She could for the first time see a whole part of life she would miss if she were to abandon the idea. Her life, Mimi’s life. Her life with Jay, and how her having children would add to their marriage. It was not a possible life with Rick she was thinking about, because she knew instinctively there would be no life for them, not a permanent one, the way there was with Jay.

Rick came in a long and copious orgasm, and she swallowed and sucked and swallowed, knew how much she loved her young lover and that he was right.

In the morning they awoke in each other’s arms, ravenous. Mimi was surprised by the smell of cooking. They bathed together, dressed and went down to the kitchen where the doctor’s houseman was cooking breakfast. Smoked bacon and cheese souffles, tiny sausages,
black coffee, followed by bowls of ripe strawberries with powdered sugar and fresh cream. They were almost embarrassed at having devoured all of that and remaining hungry. They asked for toasted brioche with butter and honey, and more black coffee.

She went with Rick to the hospital. After his examination of Doctor Quinn, he brought her in and introduced her to the eminent surgeon. ‘Talk some sense into him, I’m prepared to become his assistant any time he asks,’ said the doctor, barely above a whisper.

There was a look of astonishment on Rick’s face, a sense of pride that she had never seen before. She realized what a sacrifice it was for him to follow the sun, to seek the perfect wave. She understood then what great strength Rick had, and that, when he did find it, he’d be home and would indeed step into this man’s shoes. Rick seemed to her now extraordinarily intelligent and humane, truly a life-saver. She felt proud that he should have sought her out and made a great romantic love affair for her. Of course she must have a son. He had seen her, she had revealed herself to him. He had divined what they both wanted, even if she hadn’t known it.

She heard herself addressing Doctor Quinn. ‘Talk some sense into him? I think he has talked some sense into me, maybe even to us, only you haven’t heard him yet. He’ll come home. This is not a man who toys with his life. It only appears that way to us, because we’ve forgotten how to play with life and learn from it at the same time. He’ll come home when he’s found his wave, and the answers he needs to go forward, take his next step.’ She patted the doctor’s hand, left teacher and pupil together and went to wait for Rick in the hospital corridor.

Before they left the hospital floor, she whispered something in his ear. He smiled, and she bit her lower lip. He could see the happiness in her eyes. He knew better than to speak about it. Instead they walked together down the
corridors to the elevator. Rick was still dressed in blue jeans, a clean blue-and-white-striped, well-tailored shirt tucked into them, cowboy boots that had seen better days. Yet even without the trappings of the well-turned out doctor, he commanded respect among doctors and nurses they passed. Rick took on the mantle of authority without being pompous or arrogant. He held her hand while the gynaecologist removed the contraceptive. He kissed her, at first on the hand and then lightly on the lips.

Rick cancelled his trip to California. Mimi called Barbara and borrowed Beechtrees for a week. It was the beginning of June, a perfect time to be there, before people descended to open houses, or music-lovers from all over the world came to listen in the grass fields or in the concert hall at Tanglewood. Then the countryside would change. The life and style of those quiet New England towns, Stockbridge, Tanglewood, Lenox, the area for thirty miles around, would become busy and exciting. But, for the moment it was old faces and a slow pace. Only the Boston Symphony Orchestra was in residence, just a few great houses were open for the summer.

It had been an inspired idea. Beechtrees was opened and made ready for Mimi. Once there, she gave the staff a week’s holiday. They wanted to be alone, just the two of them, so they could have sex when and where they pleased. Where they could bring to fruition their excesses of passion and their erotic fantasies.

Mimi had returned to Beechtrees many times since the day she was brought through the gate by Joe Pauley. Yet she had never felt as she felt now, being there with Rick. It wasn’t just the sex and passion, or talking about the world and themselves. There were picnics on the small island, long walks in the parkland. Dinners and lunches held for several people that they met at their favourite drinking-place, Avaloch, a great old rambling white mansion made into a country house hotel, with a wonderful bar. Crazy,
amusing people of Rick’s age, a few even her age. Mostly clever young professional New Yorkers, masters of the one-liner, hard players, music-lovers. It was always amazing to Mimi how improbably detached she was from everything else in her life when she was with Rick. He swept her into this frivolous, carefree existence of fun and sex, a little dope, drink, and drifting, that wonderful feeling of drifting, in and out of the experiences of the moment. Reading poetry, listening to music, laughing and playing, this was their whole world.

Then one day, when they were driving through the tall, rusting ornamental ironwork gates into Beechtrees, Mimi put a hand on Rick’s arm. ‘Stop,’ she told him, and got out of the car. It was a very hot day. She stood at first quietly next to the car, then took several steps away from it. The soft top of the car was down. Rick could see quite plainly that something was wrong. Mimi was wearing a blue-and-white-checked cotton shirt, open at the collar and tucked into a pair of wide, white flannel trousers. He watched her place her hand inside the collar, pull it away from her neck and move her head from side to side, taking deep breaths as if she were suffocating. She looked past him, eyes wide, filled not so much with fear as curiosity, apprehension.

He very quietly opened the door and slipped out of the car. He stood across from her, watching. Anxious not to disturb her, he moved slowly, making his way round the front of the car towards her. She seemed unaware of his presence until, standing only inches away from her, quite gently, he placed a hand on her arm. She looked at him and sighed.

‘Oooh,’ she said, ‘it was as if someone walked over my grave.’ It was all right, she was all right. She wiped her brow, then placed her hands over her face. They were trembling.

‘Who did you see?’

‘Quite extraordinary. Let’s walk a little and I’ll tell you
about it. I don’t know what happened. Suddenly the years rolled back, and it was that first time when I rode through those gates in a Mac lorry. Just imagine, after all these years, I remember being in a Mac lorry. Green, I think. I was so unhappy, utterly unlike the way I feel here with you at Beechtrees now.’

She gave him a wan smile. ‘I had been living in a nightmare for years. My only friend, other than the two women I lived with, was this fruit pedlar. He was a big man, strong, like the strong men in a circus. He was tough, a hard man, but soft inside. He befriended us. Oh, it’s too upsetting to tell. We lived in such dire poverty. The two women in whose care I was could never cope. They sort of went to pieces. One went slightly mad and died while still a young woman. Of what I was never quite sure. The other, who was like a mother to me, whom I’d loved since I was born, became an alcoholic. Oh God, why am I thinking about it now? I don’t want to talk about it any more. Joe Pauley, the pedlar, saved me. I was about to be orphaned. I’ll never forget the kindness of that stranger. But for him, who knows what might have happened to me? He brought me here to Beechtrees, to be a companion to a little girl, and a scullery maid in the kitchen. That, compared to my previous life, was a huge step forward. It was only about sixty miles away from here, that horrible place where I lived, the Blocks in Chicopee Falls. Oh, my God, I’ve been through this gate a hundred times since that day and hardly thought about it. I’ve never told Barbara, never told my father, not a living soul, how lonely and miserable I was. Only now can I see it and tell you about it. Maybe because it doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Maybe because you’re ready to let it go. You mean you never went back to bury the ghost?’

‘Never.’

‘You never saw Joe Pauley again?’

‘Yes, many times during that first summer he came to sell
his fruit. But not after the family went off to England and I went to New York. He only came out to this area because of the family who lived here. Joe Pauley,’ she reminisced, ‘used to read me stories from a Jewish newspaper called
The Jewish Daily Forward.
He loved the writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. He was reading him in Yiddish long before he became famous in English translation. Joe Pauley used to translate from the Yiddish to Polish for us. He would read to us for a half hour, no more, no less. He was a man who liked to keep to a schedule. Joe was a different man when he was in the house with Mashinka and me. House – it was more a hovel. He seemed at home there, quite relaxed. I think we did something for him. He certainly did a lot for us.

‘I’d always wondered about his family, and then one day he came with his very beautiful, spoilt daughter, who hated the Blocks as much as I did, and the lorry and the peddling of fruit even more. I’m sure she left home as soon as she was able to. He was kind to her, tough but loving. I think I felt his love more than she did. As a child I thought what he showed me was love. Now I know it was affection. That’s it, he showed her no affection. She saw me, and resented me on sight. I saw her only twice. We became friends the second time we met, when she saw me as no threat to her. Then she vanished. She was my first friend after her father, and then they both went out of my life. This is morbid.’