‘What does the J stand for?’ asked Catherine in a huskier voice.
He had to clear his throat before he could answer.
‘Jean,’ he whispered. The word was so unfamiliar that his tongue collided with his teeth.
‘My name is Jean. Jean Albert Victor Perdu. Albert after my paternal grandfather, Victor after my maternal grandfather. My mother is a professor, and her father, Victor Bernier, was a toxicologist, a socialist and mayor. I’m fifty years old, Catherine, and I haven’t known many women, let alone slept with them. I loved one. She left me.’
Catherine studied him intently.
‘Yesterday. Twenty-one years ago yesterday. The letter is from her. I’m scared of what’s in it.’
He waited for her to throw him out, strike him or look away. But she did none of those.
‘Oh, Jean,’ she whispered instead, full of compassion. ‘Jean.’
There it was again.
The sweet sound of his own name.
They looked at each other; he noticed a fluttering in her eyes and felt himself growing softer too, letting her enter and understand him – yes, they pierced each other with their gaze and their unspoken words.
Two small boats on a sea, both thinking they’d been drifting alone since they’d lost their anchors, but now …
She ran her fingers fleetingly across his cheek.
The caress struck him with the force of a slap – a wonderful, marvellous slap.
Again. Again!
Their bare forearms brushed as she set down her wine glass.
Skin. Downy hairs. Warmth.
It wasn’t clear which of the two was more startled – but both of them immediately realised that it wasn’t the strangeness, the sudden intimacy and the touch that was startling.
They were startled by how good it felt.
11
Jean took a step until he was standing behind Catherine and could smell her hair and feel her shoulders against his chest. His heart was racing. He laid his hands incredibly slowly and extremely lightly on her slight wrists. He embraced her softly and ran his thumb and fingers up Catherine’s arms in a circle of warmth and skin.
She gasped, a tightly clasped birdcall of his name.
‘Jean?’
‘Yes, Catherine.’
Jean Perdu felt a tremor run through her whole body. It came from her very centre, below her navel, a trembling and a rolling. It spread like ripples on water. He hugged her from behind, holding her tight.
Her body was shaking, betraying the fact that it had been a long time, a very long time, since she had been touched. She was a bud trapped inside a calloused husk.
So lonely. So alone.
Catherine leaned back gently against him. Her short hair smelled good.
Jean Perdu touched her even more lightly, just stroking the tips of the little hairs, the air above her bare arms.
It’s so wonderful.
More, begged Catherine’s body. Oh please, more; it’s been so long, I am thirsting. And please, no, not so hard. It’s too much, too much. I can’t stand it! How I’ve missed it. I could cope with missing it, until now. I was so hard on myself. But now I’m cracking, I’m trickling away like sand, I’m vanishing. So help me – carry on.
Can I hear her feelings?
The only sounds coming from her mouth were variations on his name.
Jean. Jean! Jean?
Catherine let herself fall back against him and surrendered to his hands. Heat coursed through his fingers. He felt as if he were hand and cock and feeling and body and soul and man and every muscle at the same time, all concentrated in each fingertip.
He touched only what he could reach of her bare skin without moving her dress. Her arms, which were firm and brown where they emerged from her sleeves; he encircled them repeatedly, and moulded his hands to them. He stroked her nape, dark brown; her throat, delicate and soft; her magnificent, sweeping, hypnotic collarbone. He did this with the ends of his fingers, the tip of his thumb; he followed the contours of her muscles, both hard and soft, all with the tip of his thumb.
Her skin grew ever warmer. He felt the muscles swelling underneath, felt Catherine’s whole body gaining in vivacity, suppleness and heat. A dense, heavy flower emerging slowly from its bud. A queen of the night.
He let her name roll off his tongue.
‘Catherine.’
Long-forgotten emotions shook off the crust of time inside him. Perdu felt a tautness in his lower abdomen. His hands had a better sense now not only of what they were doing to Catherine, but also of how her skin responded, how her body caressed his hands in return. Her body kissed his palms and his fingertips.
How does she do that? What’s she doing to me?
Could he carry and lay her down where her trembling legs would be able to rest, where he wanted to explore how her skin felt on her calves and behind the backs of her knees? Could he conjure further melodies from her?