Ready ?
Now, as an opener, I decided to try something rather ambitious. I rose, poured out drinks, held her eye as we sipped, took her glass away. You really need to be six foot for this, but I gave it a go anyway: knelt on the floor in front of her, reached out and cupped her cheeks, urged her face towards mine … No good, not tall enough, she has to buckle inelegantly, breasts on thighs. Rise to a crouch, start work on ears, neck, only occasionally skimming lips across hers. Then, when leg begins to give way, I do not churlishly flatten her on to the sofa nor shoo her downstairs: I pressure her to the floor, half beside half on top of me. (It was bare boards so it must have seemed pretty spontaneous.) Reaching to steady her my hand has grasped her hip; not sober enough to be over-tactical, I let it stay there.
Hardly seemed worth bothering with her breasts. In one movement, her skirt is above her waist, my right leg is between her legs, and my hand floats on her downy stomach. ‘Doing’ one of her ears I bulged my eyes at the floor. Phase two.
Move my hand over her bronze tights, tracing her hip-bone, circling beneath the overhang of her buttock, shimmer flat-palmed down the back of her legs, U-turning over the knee, meander up her thighs, now dipping between them for a breathless moment, now skirting cheekily round the side. It hovers for a full quarter of a minute, then lands, soft but firm, on her cunt.
Rachel gasped accordingly – but the master’s hand was gone, without waiting for a decisive response, to scout the periphery of her tights. And her stomach was so flat and her hip-bones so prominent that I had no problem working my hand down the slack. By way of a diversionary measure (as if she wouldn’t notice) I stepped up the tempo of my kisses, harrying the corners of her mouth with reptile tongue. It must be so sexy. How can she bear it?
Meanwhile the hand is creeping on all fours. At the edge of her panties it has a rest, thinks about it, then takes the low road. The whole of me is along with those fingers, spread wide to salute each pore and to absorb the full sweep of her stomach. Mouth toils away absently, on automatic. I nudge her with my right knee and give a startled wheeze as she parts her legs wide. Still, the hand moves down, a hair’s breadth, a hair’s breadth.
On arrival, it paused to make an interim policy decision. Was now the time for the menace ? Had the time to come to orchestrate the Lawrentiana ? What I really wanted more than anything – yes, what I really wanted more than anything else in the world was a cup of tea and a think. Covertly I looked at Rachel’s face: it included clenched eyelids, parted lips, smallish forehead wistfully contoured; but there was no abandonment to be read there.
Nor to be read here. I begin to find all this rather alarming. It makes me feel confused, frightened, sad. Because we have come to the heart of the matter, haven’t we ? This is the outside looking in, the mind moving away from the body, the fear of madness, the squirrel cage. How nice to be able to say : ‘We made love, and slept.’ Only it wasn’t like that; it didn’t happen that way. The evidence is before me. (If any respectable doctor got hold of these papers he would have no choice but to cut my head off and send it to a forensic laboratory -and I wouldn’t blame him.) I know what it’s supposed to be like, I’ve read my Lawrence. I know also what I felt and thought; I know what that evening was: an aggregate of pleasureless detail, nothing more; an insane, gruelling, blow-by-blow obstacle course. And yet that’s what I’m here for tonight. I must be true to myself. Oh God, I thought this was going to be fun. It isn’t. I’m sweating here. I’m afraid.
Back on the breakfast-room floor, my fingertips awaited instructions. They had me know that I was dealing with mons hair of the equilateral-triangle variety, the pubic G-string variety, the best, not that of the grizzled scalplock, the tapered sideburn, the balding fist of stubble, fuzz and curls. So, impelled – who knows – by a twinge of genuine curiosity, a mere presence now, the hand went over the mound, straining against the pull of her tights and pants, and, once in position, began its slow descent.