The Englishman

chapter 39

THE FIRST THING I DO WHEN I GET HOME—no, wait, let me rephrase that. The first thing I do when I return to the cottage on the farm is check each room for evidence of interference, but everything seems to be as I left it. The rocking chair sits in a corner of the study looking as if the previous tenants had forgotten it. Then I call the main house on the phone, but no one picks up. The moment I put the phone down, it rings. Caught out, I automatically pick up.

“You’re back.”

“Got in twenty minutes ago.”

“Can I see you?”

I breathe and try to be mindful of the intense and ambivalent feelings raging in my stomach. He will have left this country by the summer. I can risk having an affair with someone who will only be here for another few months. Can I risk it?

Why didn’t he tell me?

Why the hell does Giles never tell me things?

I could have sex with Giles Cleveland today. Do I want to, or not? Simple, really.

He turns up on my doorstep less than fifteen minutes later, more handsome than ever, and very cautious, careful not to overwhelm me, but raring to go. He dutifully enquires after my journey and my jetlag, and I could play hard to get, but I don’t want to tease him. I want to pummel him and shout my disappointment at him, but I do not want to tease. My orgasms are powerful and effortless; vaguely I wonder why this is. Maybe because, for all his impatience, Giles is a very attentive lover, watching me, making sure of me, enjoying my pleasure even more than his own. Maybe it is because my body, remembering and anticipating its hopeless yearning for his, melts into the present moment without reserve or reservation. If I’m going to crash this plane, I’ll do it full throttle, in free fall. During some desultory talk between two bouts of sex and the soup and homemade bread that Giles pulls out of a basket like a male Red Riding Hood, I casually mention that I bumped into Paul French at the airport.

“Which airport?” he asks, frowning.

“Heathrow.” I pause for a reaction, but his face is blank again. “I was in England. To see friends.”

“You didn’t say.”

“No, I didn’t.”

He was quick to suspect Paul of having tattled, but Giles is not a man quick to speak. So we eat, both of us withdrawn and a little wary of each other, and I wonder how we are ever going to sort ourselves out.

Afterward—showered, wined and fed—I zonk out on the sofa.

“I suppose you’d like me to leave you to it now.” Giles is leaning in the open doorway.

“I’m sorry, Giles. It’s more that I can’t really ask you to stay. I have nothing more to offer today…”

“You’re still on English time. It’s the wee small hours for you.”

“That’s certainly what it feels like.” I can hardly keep my eyes open, and being snuggled up under my quilt doesn’t help. Exhaustion is a plausible reason to push him away. “Anyway, you have the dogs to look after!”

“They’re sleeping at a friend’s house.” He is still leaning in the door, watching me.

“Are they having a pajama party?”

He comes over, sits down at the bottom of the sofa and slips his hands under the quilt to find my woolly feet. Edging closer, he pulls them onto his lap and starts kneading them. His fingers inch higher, pushing up the legs of my pajamas.

“Giles, really…I’m totally knackered.” I try to pull my left foot out of his grip, but his fingers are surprisingly strong around my ankle.

“Not to worry. I’ll get my money’s worth.”

“Money’s worth?”

“Shhhh…”

I’m too tired to make a scene. If he won’t take a hint, let him sit there and massage my calves; he won’t get any more sex out of me tonight. I have a heartache.

“Horrible man,” I murmur before I drop off.

I wake up confused and annoyed. Too groggy to recall my dream. It aroused me and I want to go on dreaming, but some commotion woke me. My quilt and my pajama pants tangled, legs naked. Butt naked.

“Giles! What are you—no! Don’t do that!”

He raises his head from between my thighs. “Why not?”

I hadn’t encouraged him to return the favors that I enjoy doing for him, and he hadn’t insisted; I assumed that we both preferred it that way.

“I thought you didn’t…well, you haven’t…”

Without breaking eye contact in the dim light of the reading lamp, he runs the tip of his tongue around my *, then gently pulls it into his mouth and suckles it.

“I’m just shy,” he informs me.

I try to cover myself up, clutch, ineffectually, at my blanket, and try to push his head away, but if this is to be the first time I refuse sex to him, I must be more awake. And more determined. When I yank at the silky hair between my fingers—I can’t remember whether it was to pull him closer or to pull him off—his fingers feel for mine, tenderly at first, but then they are like a vise around my wrist and secure my arm between my hip and the seat of the sofa so that I am trapped by my own weight. His other hand comes for my other wrist and clasps it in a way that allows no resistance.

“Relax,” he murmurs.

His fingers slip over my eyes, light and warm…God, I’m so tired…then they are back on my hips, my thighs, pressing into my flesh, massaging the strands of muscle into uselessness. I rear up when the slow, soft caress of his lips and tongue becomes more insistent; I try to struggle, but he shoves his hands underneath me so that his fingers can clamp my elbows to my sides and my knees are forced apart by his shoulders. So wide open. Panic.

“Giles—I don’t like this!”

“Yes, you do.”

Unfolding me, unfurling me layer by twitching layer, Giles draws nearer to my core.

For what seems like hours I drift into and out of sleep, floating in a warm, slow stream that occasionally runs faster, more turbulently, and I tense up, subconsciously fighting against the undertow. Then I give in. Even when I’m sucked under, I do not drown. Finally I emerge, gasping for breath, climaxing against his mouth with long, soft, fluid contractions.

He waits till I am done; his lips are warm and slow on the damp skin of my belly. Never in my life have I been more deeply sated. Every fiber, every cell in my body is limp with the exhaustion that comes after long and intense stimulation.

“No! Oh, G-Giles, no, I c-can’t!”

“Yes, you can.”

He settles himself between my wet thighs and slides into me. I’m too weak even to scream, although his cock pierces me with a thrust of exquisite torture, as if my whole body were a sheath of nerve endings. I manage to clamp my arms and legs around him, to have something to hold onto, to stop my chest from exploding. He makes no attempts at finesse now; a few minutes, and he lies on top of me, heavy, surely uncomfortable on the sofa that is just long enough for me. With my arms around him and my fingers in his hair, damp at the nape, I think of newborn babies, squidgy with goo, resting on their mothers’ sweat-drenched breasts.

Tears run out of the corners of my eyes, into my ears, onto the cushion.

He lifts his head.

“Is it something Paul French said?” he murmurs.

And now I’m sobbing helplessly, hopelessly, stunned with the loss of him who is still inside me.