The Adultery Club (7 page)

Although there is less of the career thing now, of course, which is absolutely natural when you have three children, absolutely to be expected; somehow the book deadlines seem to slither through my fingers like egg yolks. I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be just to keep up.

Nicholas abruptly materializes, white-faced and agitated. “Malinche, where in heaven’s name have you
been?
It’s eight-thirty; Will’s been asking for you for the last hour! What kept you?”

“Traffic,” I say, surprised by his twitchiness. I’m not
that
late.

“I told you to allow—oh, never mind. Now that you’re here, you’d better come and be sociable.”

“I
was
, darling, I was talking to this gorgeous girl here—such a lovely suit, I hate chartreuse itself, of course, the drink I mean, but that’s simply a
delicious
color, especially with that corn gold hair, how clever of you—what did you say your name was?”

“Sara Kaplan,” she supplies.

She really
is
a very striking girl: not conventionally pretty, the nose sees to that, but she has something about her, a sensuality, an earthiness. She must be absolutely freezing in that flimsy outfit, the silly girl, but then she’s still too young, of
course, to realize that when someone is as lovely and vital as she is, she really doesn’t need to wear tons of makeup and short skirts to get attention; she could turn heads if she walked in wearing a dustbin liner and a porkpie hat.

I smile. “Of course, Sara, well, Nicholas, I
was
being sociable—as you can see, I was talking to Sara, she very kindly got me a drink, I was just about to come and find you and Will, and then here you were—”

I can feel the tension coming off Nicholas in waves. I can’t imagine what has got him so distraught, it can’t just be me, it must be something to do with work; but it’s not like him, he’s usually so self-contained. It’s one of the things that drew me to him in the first place, his assurance, his total certainty of who and what he is—not always
right
, of course, but certain nonetheless. There are more layers to Nicholas than even he knows, aspects of him I had rather hoped would come to the surface as our marriage went on; but never mind that now, we are still the best of friends, of lovers, so much luckier than most couples these days.

I take his arm and guide him toward his colleagues, chatter soothingly about absolutely nothing in his ear, stroke him emotionally and mentally and even physically as we stand talking and laughing with Will, and finally he pulls me against him and I feel him relax beside me; though not
quite
enough to totally erase that distant stirring of alarm.

I realize that now really isn’t the time to mention that Trace is moving back to Salisbury.

I awaken
from dreams of pale, long limbs and strawberry gold hair with a tumescent erection that makes my balls ache. It’s still dark outside, apart from the garish glare of multicolored Christmas lights that Evie insisted we hang along the eaves, and for which vulgar display of infectious Americana I risked life and limb atop the window cleaner’s borrowed ladder.

I brush my palm across the warm vale that dips between Mal’s shoulder and hips, cupping her buttocks lightly with my hand. My middle finger curls between her legs and strokes the soft fur around her pussy, sliding into the welcoming wetness. Mal doesn’t respond, but the change in her regular breathing tells me she’s awake.

I slide closer, penis nudging the small of her back. Gently I find her clitoris and increase the pace and pressure of my finger, reaching my other hand over her shoulder toward her
breasts. Mal mumbles something indistinct and rolls onto her stomach, taking both breasts and pussy out of my reach.

“Nicholas—”

“It’s OK, don’t worry, we have time. It’s not six yet.”

Easing my way down the bed, I bury my head between her flanks and describe small circles from her coccyx down to her pussy with my tongue. Sweet, like the lavender honey she harvests from our hives in the orchard every June.

Rising up on my haunches, I replace my tongue with my rigid cock at the entrance to her behind. Mal wriggles and squirms in the bed beneath me and flips onto her back, slender legs opening in welcome as she smiles sleepily up at me. She’s always loved early-morning sex; we both have. To wake warm and aroused and melt into each other—there’s no better way to start the day. She starts to draw me in to her, but I pull back and go down on her again, opening her like a ripe fig. I can feel her impatience as she tightens her thighs. Her juices dribble down my chin as if I’ve bitten into a rich peach.

My cock throbs as I move my body over hers. It nudges at her pussy and I slide in, savoring her tight, wet grip. Her small breasts crush against my chest. I rock my hips and thrust into her, feeling the familiar heat course through my body, down my cock, sweat slicking our skin together. My feet overlap the foot of the bed and the headboard crashes timpani against the wall. Hot—want—need—want—

Sara
.

Christ, I didn’t say her name aloud, did I? I glance fearfully down at my wife. Her expression is as serene and untroubled as ever. Thank God. But still.

I sag against Mal as release and shame wash over me. It wasn’t my wife’s long dark corkscrew curls I saw spread out
on the pillow just now, but Sara’s cropped strawberry blond head. Even as I kiss Mal’s high little brown breasts, in my mind I am burying my head in Sara’s pink, pillowy cleavage.

I haven’t been able to get the damned woman out of my mind since she walked into my office. This has gone beyond the reflexive, cursory sexual interest of a breathing male for any attractive female who crosses his path. It’s all-consuming. Everywhere I look, I see Sara. I feel as if I’m going insane. It’s not as if I’m stuck in an unhappy marriage, looking for an affair; that’s the
last
thing I’d ever do. Dear God, if anyone should know firsthand the damage infidelity can cause, it’s me. Christ, I
love
Mal. Unreservedly. No question. I don’t even know Sara.

“That was nice,” Mal says, stroking my hair. “Again.”

“Did you—”

“No. But that doesn’t matter.”

“It does, of course it does. Let me—”

She bats my hand away. “Lovely, but let’s wait till tonight, Nicholas. The children will be up soon, we have to get going. It’s the girls’ Nativity play tonight, and I’ve still got sequins to sew on the Button Dragon and a pterodactyl’s wings to superglue.”

I take eager refuge in domesticity, hiding in its comfortable, familiar folds from other, disturbing, thoughts. “Admittedly it’s been a long time since I played Balthasar on the school stage,” I say, climbing out of bed, “but I’m fairly certain the shepherds didn’t watch their flocks all seated on the ground while a pterodactyl hovered overhead. It would have eaten the sheep for a start.” I knot the cord of my navy dressing gown at my waist in preparation for the dash down the polar corridor to the bathroom. “I’m not convinced about the Button Dragon, either.”

“Just be grateful Baby Jesus still gets a part,” Mal says, “though after the disaster last year with Chloe Washington and the three baby ferrets, I think they’re using a plastic doll in the manger.”

I muffle an expletive as I step on a piece of Lego. “I’m just grateful when we turn up at church for Harvest Festival and it hasn’t been replaced by a mosque.”

“You old fraud, you haven’t been to church for Harvest Festival since they were using plowshares instead of tractors,” Mal calls after me as I hop down the hall. “Don’t forget, the service starts at six; you promised you’d catch the early train so you could get there on time.”

I sigh as I fill the sink with icy water and dip my razor into it. I have a pile of work on my desk so high I’m surprised it doesn’t have snow on the upper levels. Ten days before Christmas, everyone wants their divorce resolved before the country shuts down for its habitual two-week holiday, and half the clerks and barristers have gone shopping. I wish Mal realized that I want to witness my progeny tread the boards as much as she does, but someone has to keep the family in buttons and pterodactyl wings.

It’s still dark and bitterly cold when Mal drops me at the station just before seven. A biting wind skitters litter on the platform and knifes straight through my clothes. I bury my hands deeper in my overcoat pockets and stamp my feet, exhaling plumes of smoke as I wait for my train. On the opposite platform, a young woman shivers in a short denim skirt and lightweight summer jacket, her bare legs almost blue with cold. It never fails to amaze me, the level of discomfort women will endure in the name of fashion. I’m astonished Sara hasn’t caught her death, given some of the flimsy outfits
in which she turns up to work, though she does always look very attractive. Very. But of course Mal has some lovely warm sweaters, extremely pretty, in fact. And jeans are so much more practical.

The seven-eight to Waterloo pulls in ten minutes late; despite the early hour, the train is dense with Christmas shoppers heading for the bright lights of Oxford Street. By the time we reach Basingstoke, daytrippers are overflowing into First Class, the disruptive invasion of crisp packets and chattering mobiles making it impossible for me to concentrate on my case notes. I work instead on my crossword until we get to Woking, at which point a handsome, well-upholstered woman in her mid-fifties—a fellow fixture of the seven-eight train—enters the carriage. She is, like me, an avid enthusiast of the
Times
acrostic; over the years we’ve grown quietly accustomed to exchanging newspapers shortly after she boards the train so that we may compare notes, returning them to each other five minutes before arriving at Waterloo. I assume she is also a lawyer or barrister, since I have occasionally observed her working on ribboned briefs herself; but since we have never actually spoken, I can’t be sure.

Since all the seats are taken, I yield mine; she nods her thanks and takes it without fuss. How much simpler is life when there are certain rules and all know and adhere to them.

Two teenage girls in sleeveless padded jackets and combat trousers exchange smirks as I take my place in the aisle. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the train window and suddenly see myself as they must: a dull, old-fashioned, middle-aged businessman in a buttoned-up overcoat whose idea
of rebelliousness is putting foreign coins in a parking meter. I wonder bleakly if this is how I appear to Sara. She can’t be more than a few years older than these two.

As every morning for the last month, I feel a guilty, appalled thrill of anticipation as I walk into the office. I refuse to look at the coat rack to see if her cinnamon wool coat is already there.

A loop of wilting silver tinsel is suspended like a hangman’s noose above Emma’s empty desk. I secure the limp tinsel to the ceiling as I pass—I daren’t leave such a potent symbol in plain view of my less stable clients—and take sanctuary in my resolutely unadorned, unfestive office.

“Scrooge,” Mal declared last weekend, when I refused to climb fifty feet up the decaying oak tree at the bottom of the garden to cut some sprigs of mistletoe growing on its upper boughs.

I refrained from commenting on the pagan nature of this particular Christmas tradition, or the stickiness of the bloody berries when trodden by three small children throughout the house. Instead, I drew my wife’s attention to the twin facts of our monolithic mortgage, in which we have yet to make a significant dent, and my less-than-monolithic life insurance.

“All right, you can buy a bunch at the garage down the road,” she conceded, after a considered moment. “Now that’s not going to threaten our financial security, is it?”

“You haven’t seen the prices they’re asking,” I said darkly.

At home, where I cannot hope to prevail against four women, I have surrendered on the mistletoe—and the rooftop fairy-lights, holly on the picture rails (and, shortly thereafter, embedded in the bare foot), paper chains, strings of gruesome Christmas cards, and the loathsome red poinsettias which Kit insists on giving us every year, just to annoy
me; but my office is my own. I will have neither tinsel nor cards depicting drunken elves being pulled over on the hard shoulder of the M25. It’s not that I’m a killjoy; actually, I love Christmas—the
real
Christmas, hard to find these days: homemade mince pies and mulled wine; satsumas in stockings and bowls of Brazil nuts; carol singers who know more than the first two lines of “Good King Wenceslas;” midnight Mass; and most wonderful of all, the expression on my daughters’ faces when they race downstairs in the morning and discover that Father Christmas (“Santa Claus,” like trick-or-treating and iced tea, firmly belongs four thousand miles away across the Atlantic) has filled to overflowing the pillowcases they left in the fireplace along with a raw carrot and warming glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream.

I sit down at my desk and slit open my post. For a short while I deal with one or two urgent letters, dictating responses for Emma to type up later, and return a couple of telephone calls; but I cannot wall myself in my office forever. Somehow, I have to learn to temper my atavistic response to Sara. This situation cannot continue.

At two minutes to ten o’clock I gird my loins—rather literally, given the permanent semierection I seem to be sporting these days—and join the other partners in the conference room for our weekly case review, suppressing a flicker of irritation when I see that Joan and David are not alone. Will Fisher may have technically retired, but that hasn’t stopped him turning up every Friday for the past four weeks; and since we are still in the process of putting the financing in place to buy out his partnership, we must perforce indulge his dead man’s hand on the tiller.

“Nicholas, good to see you!” Fisher exclaims as I set down my files.

“Good morning, Will. What a pleasant surprise.”

“Just thought I’d pop in and see how you’re all getting along without me,” Fisher says jovially, as he has done every week. “Probably all wishing I’d just bugger off and play golf and leave you to get on with it, hmm?”