Love Revisited

*

Love Revisited

I am thinking about our love affair. How you met me at the station and we went immediately to your place and made love.

Why did you insist on my keeping my socks on?

I remember the taxi ride from St Pancras and the smell of new rubber on the inside of the cab, which was one of those bizarrely inflated to accommodate gigantic wheelchairs. When I commented this you admonished me, telling me about how your mother found them very useful.

There was often a disquieting tension between us, which passion did not quite fill. At least, I sensed that. Did you? 

You took me to a little French place in Soho. You ordered crepes, recommending them gushingly, though I found them meretricious at best, with an unpleasing lack of crispness. I did not mention this.

 It began to rain heavily. I felt sick after the crepes but, as we made our wet way up Wardour Street, made a solid effort to ensure the umbrella mainly covered your head, protecting your precious hair, while serendipitously allowing sufficient rain to wetten the fabric of your thin summer dress round your backside so that I could see the elastic line of your panties across your hips: surely only an unusually thick rubber could create such a clear line?

I think of that as our principal erotic moment, much more than the bedroom scene earlier: I’d felt humiliated by the sock-wearing,  and I am grateful to the London rain for its blessing, a compensation from the Fates. Shy, repressed indeed, I did not act on my instincts and give that elastic a good twang. After the conversation about your disabled mother I'd felt constrained: my lower moral intelligence too keenly exposed for me to act spontaneously.

*

Now you are married: I know because I ran into your half-brother. I can't remember which one, there seemed to be so many. This one was quite charming: there does exist a fellowship among men, and his eyes read mine with pity. He was wearing a good suit and in a hurry, but for moments, at the entrance to Marylebone Underground, we shared something deep with glances and platitudes.

*

I'm standing in Camberwell waiting for the 36 bus in the polluted air.

*

Illustration: Someone you once loved, monotype, 554 / 84 cm, 2009

I Love You - An Annie Story.

"Do you often think about escape?" asked Annie.

" Don`t so much now, but I used to. I used to think about it all the time, and sometimes the desire to escape became so strong that I wanted to commit suicide."

Annie began laughing. "You are quite preposterous," she said.

*

A pause.

*

"I love you," I said.

"Do you? Do you really?" said Annie.

"Yes. I do. I love you more than anything."

"Really?"

"Yes. I do, I really do."

Beside the lake.

*

Beside the Lake

I walk beside a lake. You're over there, standing on the sand quite far but close enough to see the grim look in your face.

I think how pretty is your reflection, how your dress falls, a perfect curve from your shoulders. It's an ivory white dress and your dark brown hair flows down to your shoulders too, so from here your silhouette against the water is a series of arcs, each echoing the other. Your hem folds over the edges of your tiny shoes. I remember how delicate and soft your feet are, with no calluses. 

You are wearing a champagne coloured Hermès scarf round your neck, French style. I gave it to you when I came back from Paris last year and we had just started seeing each other. You let me tie it round your neck: I recall that moment, the smell of you so close: you, your perfumes and shampoos: nature and art in union; intoxicating...

Mirrored in the water, every now and again a ripple breaks your reflection, but only for so long as to remind you how serene and magnificent is your image, a medieval queen of sorrow.

I stand there, weighed down by irritation and despair. I also have an itching in my scalp, partly a psychosomatic response to our recent row about the missing train tickets which I accused you of losing, and partly because the shampoo seems to have run out. To my credit, I did not mention this in the argument, though admittedly I am not a big fan of hair washing as it seems to make my thin hair go flat and the size of my face then seems abnormally pronounced.

But we have argued too recently for a conversation. All we can do is scowl at each other.

It hasn't been a great vacation but you do dress well. I feared you'd take off the scarf during the arguments and fling it at me in a gesture of disgust: I am glad you didn't, though I don't know if this was for sartorial reasons, because of the chill in the air, or because you simply didn't realise how much this would have hurt me.

Anyway, I'm sorry: I should have taken more photos of you with the new Samsung cell phone. I'm truly sorry about that because I'm sure our friends- especially Angela and Floyd- would have liked to see them. I'm sure they would have admired each image and added appropriately witty sweet comments on Instagram.

Now, I think I will go back to the cottage and make some gin and tonics before we catch the train back. The train tickets were in my overcoat pocket all along, but I'll say they were on the mantelpiece under The Observer's Guide to Pond Life.

*

Image: Across the Lake, Monotype http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/3208933837/in/set-72157612697830853/

*

Read to The Vicious Circle Writers' Group, April 12, 2021

*