Chapter 7

Still the same night - it's a long one - more meaningful sex and a dash to the airport...

At around five the moon’s piercing the gaps in the window blind and I’ve never felt more awake.        

     “Nookie?” He pauses for a moment like he’s sure I’ll have something to say about the tone of his voice. I don’t. “Nookie?” He repeats. “With you?”

     “Kev, I think there’s only two of us here. At the moment anyway…”

     He rolls over to face me. “Since when do you and me have Nookie?”

     Kev means all that stuff he used to be fond of saying about sex being sacred and making love to me being so much more than just a physical act, blah, blah, blah…

    “We make love, don’t we?” he reminds me. “We always did before anyway. But after the other night and my suggesting you shag someone else and..”

     “Don’t remind me Kev or I’ll go off the whole thing! It’s very borderline, you know.”

     “Tell me about it! How the hell do I do it properly with you after the other night? I was off my head, Lizzie. Just thinking about it has made my cock wither to the size of a cotton bud.”

     “No,” I tell him, “it’s all in your head,” but feeling around just below the hem of his t-shirt I come across a flaccid arrangement of terrified body parts which seem to be on the point of dissolving into his pubic hair.

     “Ugh!” I gasp, involuntarily pulling away my hand like something might come alive and put suckers out.

     “It’s your fault, I reckon!” he says. “All that stuff you were telling me about how unsatisfactory I was!”

     “But it’s good to clear the air! Communication is what keeps relationships alive. You’ll have to sort your head out.”

      “Well, can’t you do the nookie thing? I mean just make it happen without me having to think about it – cos if I have to think about it, I’m just gonna feel like the kind of shit who deserves to have his balls cut off anyway…”

     The thing about sex is, once you’ve gotten used to having it, on tap, from someone who is as physically right for you as a balanced diet, it is very, very hard to give up. Perhaps some women feel that, once betrayed, all activity should cease in that department so they don’t end up feeling used. It’s a point of view – but I say Stuff It. Me and Kev, we still have that man /woman thing going on and, since the episode under the candy-striped duvet has cleared at least some of the air between us, I feel we should dip a toe back in the water. Let him worry about whether or not he’s being used.

     “And then we have to remember that I’m now in my forties,” he says with a sigh. “Y’know I reckon a bloke can lose it all so much more easily in his forties. Given what I’ve done and how it’s left me feeling about myself I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to have ‘nookie’ again.”

     There’s a catch in his voice, so I have to say “Oh, hey! That’s rubbish.”

     “So I’ve ordered up a vibrator to get me through any kind of dry spell.”

     “Great!” he says limply. “That’s great! Look forward to seeing it, or feeling it or hearing it go or whatever…”

     “I could show you a picture – I printed it off the internet…”

     “Not right now, eh? It’ll mean putting the lights on …”

     “Okay… but are you sure you don’t want to, I mean, a bit of the conventional…?”

    “I’ve told you, it’s dead down there. Think I’m turning into a woman. They say women get deeper voices and facial hair as they get older, don’t they? Well I’m losing my hair, my tits are getting bigger and (present circumstances not withstanding) I’m periodically overcome with the urge to weep.”

     He makes me laugh. He can always make me laugh. Laughter breaks down barriers like nothing else can. I run my hand over him under the duvet. His genitals are still a boneless heap like the remains of a single-tentacled sea creature washed-up on a sandbank.

    “Don’t worry,” I tell him. “It’s still there. You haven’t turned into a woman yet. But since you raised the subject, here’s an idea - we could think of your penis as just an over-large external clitoris and I could do to you what I like to have done to me.”

Ducking under the duvet, I run my cheek down his body, past chest hair, that scar at his navel from a childhood op, on past plump lower abdomen and down to the floppy end of things. It’s surprisingly nice when it’s like this. Warm, musky and soft. Asking to be treated gently. I nuzzle his balls with my nose whilst prizing his legs apart. One quick flick with the tip of my tongue and the boneless tentacle begins to stiffen. Dart kisses over it and then do the same inside the creases of his thighs. I can hear him begin to moan softly but it’s a far away sound due to the insulating effects of a winter-weight goosedown duvet. Our heads aren’t close, no chance our eyes will meet (awkward when there’s so much stashed away behind them) and no way any piece-of-meat sex can take place – I’m in control down here, trying to imagine him touching me, kissing me, this way. How would it feel? What would I want next? Push my tongue hard in amongst the soft tissue at the base of his penis and wiggle it, stroke his balls from the back forward with the finger tips of my left hand, re-wet my tongue and draw it (still wiggling) all the way up his shaft to the very tip. His hands reach under the duvet to grab my head as I slide him all the way into my mouth, massaging as I go. Don’t know which is the wettest – my mouth or my crotch – but there’s a lot of warm saliva running down the length of him to make the movement of my fingers, up and down, easier. The fingers of my left hand still caress his balls but now more firmly, pressing his perineum from time to time until they begin to move, drawing up ready for imminent ejaculation.

     Breaking off to breathe, I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and plant a few more delicate kisses while his fingers tighten on my skull and he waits in an agony of anticipation for me to start again.

     After that it takes seconds. Mouth’s full of warm semen, face wet with saliva and, after having caused him to shudder like he had thirty thousand volts through him, boneless sea creature collapses once again into a state of death-like dormancy.

     I don’t want to go up for air just yet. Pulling him onto his side, I push one of my legs between his and holding him close stroke my slippery clitoris for the very few moments it takes to bring the vibrations of orgasm crashing through my own body.

     We sleep like sticky babies for the hour and a half remaining till the alarm goes off.

 

     Having ignored the alarm until it’s apparently ceaseless racket makes me want to crush small, furry animals in my bare hands, I finally manage to stagger downstairs to make sure the boys are getting a nutritious breakfast. I am wearing the lovely uncrushable satin wrap (inside out), a thick pair of woolly socks and my old glasses (new ones having gone missing). I probably have semen in my hair but will pretend it’s toothpaste if questioned.

     Half way through a bowl of Weetabix Eldest asks:

     I stare down at my woolly socks then up at lop-sided clock clinging to the kitchen wall.

     “Well, isn’t it time we left?”

     Still puzzled. “It’s only five to eight – you’ll make your bus, won’t you?”

     Youngest is looking from me to his brother and back again. Suddenly he correctly evaluates my ignorance level. “School finished yesterday you know mum,” he says. “He’s going to see his dad today.”

      Christ! The airport! I have to get Eldest to the airport for a 9.45 flight to Gatwick! Running back upstairs, I throw on an Arran sweater and jeans (no knickers, no time). Right eye refuses to tolerate a contact lens so I leave the house wearing only one. Kev would go up the wall if he knew, but his right-hand man Gary’s not going to be here till nine, so Kev won’t wake up till five-to. Plan to be in the airport caff by then, downing a latte.

     I am astonished that Eldest has done all his own packing without any assistance from me. At least, none that I can remember.

    “Not enough of ‘em but I packed a bunch of dirties – dad’ll wash them for me.”

    “Good thinking. Oh my God! Haven’t got long have we?”

    Now the Audi, in contrast to the Pick-up, sticks to the road even with a first-thing-in-the-morning, knicker-less, caffeine-free woman wearing only one contact lens at the wheel. Five miles into the journey, Youngest’s sitting up in the back clutching a headrest and grinning from ear to ear.

     “Mum, are you ok?” Eldest asks as we join the A9, accelerator pedal fully depressed and my face screwed up in a desperate effort to focus.

     “Me? Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I tell him. “Don’t worry. I just didn’t get much sleep last night.”

     He’s old enough to find this an unsatisfactory reply and I am forced to elaborate so decide to concentrate on one small part of the night. “I had a dream,” I say. “A stressful one.”

      “Tell me it – that is, if you can do that and still get us round Tore roundabout without smearing our insides across the carriageway.”

      I send a very quick, cold stare in his direction – can’t take Good Eye off the road for too long.

    “You want to know what I was dreaming about? Really? Ok. Wait a minute, yep, now I remember - it was me and Kev, we were on holiday with another couple in this strange holiday apartment. It was part of a large hotel and there were these staircases everywhere and rooms on several levels. Don’t know exactly who the other couple were – well except for the bloke but I’ll get to that in a minute. I’d arranged for all four of us to go out on a bus trip organized by the Open University. The bus was due any time but I’d decided I had to get a quick shower before we left. There were supposed to be three showers in the apartment, in three different rooms. I was running up and down staircases and in and out of rooms trying to find them and every time I found one, bloody Hugh Grant was in it! I kept my irritation in check but the time was going on and being responsible for the bus trip and so forth I felt very stressed about the whole situation - woke up in a cold sweat.”

He’s thoughtful. Youngest now has headphones on and a glazed expression so we’re on our own.

     “Weird eh?” I press him. “What d’you make of it?”

    “It’s not weird. It’s pretty straightforward really.”

    “Is it? Go on then – you tell me what it all means.”

   “Well, first of all it’s a chaos dream. Everything’s strange, confused and you don’t feel you’re in control. Then there’s the arrangements. You feel like everything’s down to you, you’re carrying the whole show. Wanting a shower? That’s about your personal needs and how difficult you find it to meet them and as for Hugh Grant, well, it’s not really Hugh Grant, is it?”

    I am stunned into short questions. “Isn’t it?”

    “Of course not, it’s Kev. You feel like he’s holding you back. He’s the biggest stress of all.”

    Now very stunned, bewildered, completely in the hands of my perceptive analyst, I say “Ri..i..ight,” very slowly. “Ok. So if it’s Kev, why am I seeing Hugh Grant?”

     “He’s just a convenient face plucked from your memory. You don’t want to put Kev in the shower because that would mean you’d have to face up to the problem.”

     A sharp intake of breath on my part. The Problem. Does he really know about us? You know I half suspected he did after the ironing board conversation. Has he been turning down the volume on his ‘In Flames’ CD’s in order to eavesdrop conversations in the kitchen below his room, or has he been lurking in the bathroom after lights out listening to what gets said under our duvet? The thought gives me a hot burst of pre-breakfast indigestion. I decide to test him further.

     “What about this one then? This is one that gave Kev chills recently. You know Gary, who works with Kev from time to time chipping and stump grinding and so on?”

     “Of course I know Gary mum, I walk past him most mornings on my way to the bus. He likes to sit in the log shed with a fag and his thermos…”

     “That’s right! Well, in Kev’s dream, Kev and Gary are working the chipper when something bad happens to it (don’t ask me to be specific, I’m not mechanical). Kev works and works at it but he can’t get the thing to go. When he goes back to the lorry for a cuppa he finds Gary has taken out his (Kev’s) family heirloom Spanish guitar and is playing it way better than Kev ever has – you know, like Eric Clapton or something – and Kev feels really pissed off.”

    “Oh never mind! The dream, what about the dream?”

    “Well that’s another easy one.” He stretches one shoulder and draws up his implausibly long legs even further.    

     “Ok. Well,” he begins with gravity.  “Kev’s been a tree surgeon for years. He’s tired out and he wants to do something else. That’s why he can’t get the chipper to go – it’s a metaphor for not being able to make the tree surgery business work anymore. But he’s very anxious about what else he can find to do. There are things he likes to do, such as his guitar playing, but he’s worried because tree surgery’s all he knows how to make a living at. He’s afraid that, whatever he tries, everybody else will be better at it than he is. Hence he discovers Gary (someone who works for him) playing his precious guitar better than he does!”

     A force 9 is buffeting the Kessock Bridge. ‘Closed to high-sided vehicles’ said the sign half a mile back but, because the alternative route involves a twenty mile detour via Beauly, nobody gives a monkeys. There’s an astonished look on my face as I hang onto the wheel trying to prevent us becoming the filling in a lorry sandwich (astonishment not wholly related to traffic management issues.) This is a whole new strand to the infidelity theme. Of course they raised it first at the Hairdressers but it hasn’t really come home until this moment.      Does Kev hold me back? Is it possible what’s happening to us is in some way as much about my dissatisfactions with our relationship as it is about his? I start to weigh it all up in my head while we snake our way past a Safeway lorry. You have work (lots of it), children, the house and the most important aspect of your social life is supposed to be your man. But when it’s all put on a plate for him, complacency sets in and he quickly stops making any kind of effort. All his everyday problems become yours (you’re supposed to be looking after him) and then he starts to get older, obsessed with the comparative engine sizes of his vehicles and anything which might cause back strain. He sends you out to buy his athletes foot cream for him, like men should by right have someone to do that sort of thing for them, but when urgent improvements are required in the kitchen he procrastinates and procrastinates, as though there’s some real doubt as to whether shelves, cupboards, hygienic work surfaces and a functioning cooker come into the category of worthwhile expenditure.

     Maybe, after a while, we (women) all start to feel ‘why am I doing this? Why have I put myself in a position where my life is proscribed by the demands of a male entity who’s sole purpose in being here was to bring me joy – and this he hasn’t done for too long now?’ Maybe, although we think we keep our feelings under wraps for the sake of a quiet family life, we send out signals, loud and clear, to drive the offending male to an act of ultimate offence and a decisive kicking out which lands him with the blame for everything, ever after? When I told him to stop using MSN messenger because only kids and nutters used it, was I really saying ‘and if you’re one of those I reckon I can do a whole lot better so get lost’?

Add this to Kev’s apparent anxiety about his own future prospects once his joints freeze half way up a Giant Redwood and I suppose you might just have a recipe for mid-life meltdown.

        “You know, you’re good, you’re very good…” I murmur to myself.

        “Thanks!” responds Eldest. “I’ve always been good at explaining dreams. Except my own of course. Never understand my own!”

        His words slowly penetrate my selfishly distracted consciousness. I shake my head, focus my eye, remember to change up into fifth and re-engage with my offspring.    

     “Really?” I say. “Well maybe I can sort yours out for you?”

     He’s already told me so much more about me and Kev than Stella, our tranquil, relentlessly non-judgemental counsellor. I’m rubbish at dreams but I feel like I should be brave enough to try and return the favour.

    Eldest is keen to play this game a little longer, especially now it’s his turn. “Ok. Yeah!” he says enthusiastically. “Well, the one I get most frequently is about me and my friends. I’m talking to them or joking with them or just having a really good time in some way, then I start to see them fading away. This makes me sad but I have this awful feeling that it’s only sad for me and that they’re not as bothered about being my friend as I am about being theirs. It makes me wake up with my heart racing.”
  

     I know what this one’s about.  

     “You know it’s not unusual,” I tell him slowly, “for children who’ve grown up with an absent parent to feel like they don’t matter as much as they should. It’s not true, of course. You and Youngest, in your own chaotic, mind-bending way, make my life worth living. D’you remember getting bathed on summer’s evenings and how I’d let you both run straight from the bath out onto the lawn wearing nothing but your enthusiasm? D’you remember the battles on the landing before bed with rolled up socks for ammo? And the Faerie Glen? Walking the little path to the waterfall, seeing it covered with long icicles? Listen, you’re both very wonderful people and I’m certain you’re a very valued friend. You’re just a little bit insecure. No need to be. You have a heck of a lot to offer and your life’s going to be utterly fantastic.”

     He’s fighting to prevent a smile taking over his face.

     “No worries. I read something somewhere. It went like this: ‘you have to learn to live with chaos if you want to give birth to a star’. You and Youngest are my stars.”

      We park up beside the helicopter sheds, grab his bag from the boot and then run through the wind to the single Dalcross terminal dragging Youngest behind us like a wind sock.

    It always pains me to let him go so far away, especially at Christmas, but subscription to the modern myth that contact with his dad is absolutely vital (say ‘myth’ because I have friends who haven’t subscribed - life seems so much less complicated for them and the children appear to be perfectly decent human beings) means twelve hundred mile round trips on the plane, on his own, on a regular basis. I try to hug him discreetly to avoid the obvious embarrassment such a display of maternal affection is bound to cause a boy of his age, but manage to knock a rainbow-coloured shower of Skittles from his hand anyway so that every head in the airport looks our way. “Bye mum,” he says gruffly, patting me on the back. “See you soon. And thanks for the chat about the dream. Funny, but I’d never thought about it that way. Guess it takes somebody else to explain these things for you. Now I can see it though, think I’ll be able to catch myself thinking that way and tell myself not to.”

        Something warm and fuzzy rises up inside me and pops out flowers, then his name’s on the tannoy. “Would passenger Davidson, flying on the 9.45 BA flight to London Gatwick please make his way to departure…”

       He ducks into the baggage check and is instantly grabbed by an agitated flight attendant who proceeds to hurry him through plate glass doors onto the tarmac. Youngest and I see him try to turn for a wave, but the attendant has him by one arm and the other’s clutching his holdall. Seconds later they’ve broken into a run and disappeared.

      “Aw! I’m gonna miss him…” says Youngest with a sob in his throat. Wrestling similarly powerful emotions myself, I take Other Boy’s hand, squeeze it and lead him towards the nearest exit.

      “You’ll miss him, will you? Even though the two of you fight like cat and dog?” I ask, teasing, as we cross the concourse.

      “We like fighting,” he says. “It’s fun.”

      I shake my head at him, disapproving. “Well I hate it!” I say. “I do my best to avoid fights. And so should you.”

      Outside the terminal the wind sears our lungs and chills the roots of our hair. Flakes of snow descend like pillow-stuffing from thick, yellow cloud. I hold his warm hand tightly in mine as we jog back to the car, reminding myself that he’s one of the best reasons I have for avoiding a fight, a breakdown, an estrangement or any situation likely to give rise to the long-term absence of a parent.

Is Eldest about to become a psycho-analytical  airborne prodigy?

And what further hair-raising excitement does the festive season hold, not to mention the rest of the day?

Chapter 8 awaits you...