He wanted to see her lying there in front of him, eyes open, their gazes interlocking; he wanted to touch her lips with his fingers, and her face. He wanted her whole body to kiss his hands – every part of her body.
Catherine turned around, eyes the grey of rain-laden storm clouds, wide, wild and turbulent.
Now he lifted her up. She melded herself to him. He carried her into the bedroom, rocking her gently on the way. Her flat was the mirror image of his own. A mattress on the floor, a clothes rail in the corner, books, reading lamp – and a record player.
His own reflection greeted him in the high windows – a faceless silhouette. Upright, though. Strong. A woman in his arms – and what a woman.
Jean Perdu felt his body shaking something off. An emotional mustiness, a blindness about himself. A desire to be invisible.
I am a man … again.
He laid Catherine on the simple bed, on the smooth white sheet. She lay there, her legs together, her arms by her sides. He stretched out on his side facing her, watched how she breathed and how her body trembled in certain places, like the after-tremors of tiny earthquakes under the skin.
In the hollow of her throat, say. Between breast and chin, below her neck.
He leaned over and placed his lips on the trembling. That birdcall again.
‘Jean …’
Her pulsations. Her heartbeat. Her warmth. He felt Catherine streaming into him over his lips. Her scent, and how his muscles contracted. The heat she was radiating caught a flame in him.
And then – Oh! I’m dying! – she touched him.
Fingers on fabric, hands on skin. She had run her hands up along his tie and burrowed under his shirt.
As her hand made contact with his skin, it was as though a very ancient sensation was rearing its head. It was spreading, filling Monsieur Perdu from inside to outside, and rising higher and higher, into every fibre and cell, until it reached his throat and took his breath away.
He didn’t move, so as not to disturb this wonderful, awe-inspiring, absolutely captivating sensation; he held his breath.
Lust. Such desire. And even more …
But he forced himself to breathe out slowly, as slowly as possible, so as not to betray how paralysed with delight he was, and not to potentially unsettle Catherine by his overwhelmed stillness.
Love.
The word bubbled up inside him, along with a memory of this feeling; he noticed water filling his eyes.
I miss her so much.
A tear rolled out of the corner of Catherine’s eye too. Was she weeping for herself? Or for him?
She withdrew her hand from his shirt, then unbuttoned it from bottom to top and took off his tie. He sat up, half over her, to make it easier.
Then she put her hand behind his neck. She didn’t press. Or pull.
Her lips parted to form the tiny slit that said, ‘Kiss me’.
He traced Catherine’s mouth with his fingers, running them again and again over the various textures of softness.
It would have been easy to carry on.
To bend his head and bridge the remaining distance. To kiss Catherine. The game of tongues, turning novelty into familiarity, curiosity into cupidity, happiness into …
Shame? Unhappiness? Arousal?
Reach under her dress, gradually unclothe her, first her underwear, then the dress – yes, that’s how he’d do it. He wanted to know she was naked under her dress.
But he didn’t do it.
For the first time since they had touched, Catherine had shut her eyes. At the very moment her lips were opening, her eyes closed. She had shut Perdu out. He could no longer see what she really wanted. He sensed that something had happened inside Catherine; something was lurking there to do her harm.
The memory of what it was like to be kissed by her husband? (And wasn’t that an awfully long time ago? And didn’t he already have a mistress then? And hadn’t he said things, terrible things even then, such as: ‘It’s disgusting when you’re ill’ or ‘If a man doesn’t want a woman in his bedroom any more, then the woman is partly to blame’?) Was her body recalling how much it had been ignored – no more tenderness, no caresses, no loving words? The memory of being taken by her husband. (Never so she got enough; he shouldn’t spoil her, he said. Spoiled women didn’t love the same way; and what more did she want anyway? It was already over for him.) The memory of the nights when she had doubted whether she would ever be a woman again, ever be touched again, ever be thought beautiful, ever be alone with a man behind closed doors?
Catherine’s ghosts were there and they had brought his to the party too.
‘We’re no longer alone, Catherine.’
Catherine opened her eyes. The storm in them had subsided from a silvery glint to a fading picture of surrender.
She nodded. Tears filled her eyes.
‘Yes. Oh, Jean. That idiot appeared at the very moment I was thinking, “At last. At last a man is touching me as I always wished to be touched.” Not like … well, that idiot.’