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| From THE MOST INTIMATE PLACE by Rosemary Furber |
You were such a marvellous sight propped up against three white pillows wearing nothing but your glasses.
"She bloody well does," you said, "Look at this acknowledgement. After two pages of publishers, grief counsellor, therapists and so on, she mentions NS." You"d marked it with four vertical red lines: "Finally, how can I express my appreciation to NS for his inspiration and encouragement? He led me through the fire. That he did not get burnt too is testimony to God"s gentle care."
"Pass the vomit bag."
"NS," you said, remember? "Neil Sarbridge."
"Could be Nobby Shawcross."
"Who's he?"
"Drummer for Steel Virgin."
"I don"t think so. Who's this priest she"s on about the whole time?"
"Judas Priest she"s on about?"
"Oh wake up, Patrick, you are infuriating sometimes."
"What? You said Judas Priest and I"m in trouble! What?"
"You can be perfectly clever when you want to but it's such hard work dragging it out of you."
I hate it when you go on about what how useless I am. That"s why I"m writing all this. I want you to see it the way I saw it for once. How it was for me. Oh Julia, how I wish you were here now to disagree. I want you so much. The real Julia, not the one in my head.
Anyway, suddenly you performed an act of genius. Not a sexual one, sadly. Almost as important as that.
"How can you not see," you said, "this book isn't a 'faith safari' at all. it's all about sex."
You"d found the elusive porn, I thought:
"Show me!"
"Not in so many words but … Look, look at this about Ruth here. Halberd says it's "A simple tale of two people falling for the good in each other." Rubbish. it's a simple tale of how to catch a man."
"Pff, disgusting. I love the way you hate all that Bridget Jones stuff." Well trained, me. But had you found the porn?
"Listen," you said, "Ruth's mother in law tells Ruth to wait until the guy's drunk, then go and lie down beside him in the night."
"She does?"
"Yeah."
"Where? Where is she? Bring her here!"
I made a grab for the book. You held it high above our heads and read aloud:
"And it came to pass at midnight."
I love it when you put your arms over your head. Your armpit was irresistibly close. I couldn"t help it, I had to kiss it full on before I ran my tongue down the swell of your breast.
"Patrick! I am sick to death of it!"
I pulled away horrified:
"Of my tongue?"
"No I mean -"
I latched on to your nipple and gave it a soft tug. It sprang to attention, as solid as a liquorice torpedo from the school shop.
You pushed me away:
"No, it's all this obedience stuff, you know, why's it always the women who have to take the orders?"
I did as I was told and surfaced:
"Didn"t you say a woman told her to do it?"
"It's unnatural. Every chapter"s the same, another woman trapped, taking orders, well I think we've moved on a bit since those days and it's typical of the church to try and keep women locked into the outdated mores of a defunct culture, this far, this far" – your thumb and forefinger showed a distance about the same length as my now dwindled penis – "frankly from the Taleban!"
"Can I have permission to kiss your navel, Julia?"
You straightened your specs and perched the book on your belly but I could tell from the smile that I had your attention.
"It came to pass," you read, "at midnight that he was afraid."
"What was he afraid of?"
"Doesn't say. Then He moaned like a baby in a bad dream."
I did a bit of moaning myself.
"and sat up with his eyes wide to find, behold, I lay at his feet. "You are kind and virtuous, Ruth.""
"Terrific," I sat and crossed my arms, "I"ve never heard anything more erotic."
"Patrick, listen! I will forebear to touch you. Lie with me here until morning and be my comfort." Never in my life had I felt more naked than when he covered me with his skirt."
"Covered her with his skirt?" I folded my arms. "Like he"s Axl Rose or something?"
"Who?"
"Guns n Roses." I made a rock fist.
"I don"t think so," you went on primly, you are so fucking sexy when you"re prim, "Halberd explains the skirt thing. There"s a bit in Ezekiel apparently where God says to Israel, "Thy time was the time of love and I spread my skirt over thee and covered thy nakedness.""
"So Ruth was naked?"
You leafed back a page or two.
"Not literally, no. But the skirt means he"s protecting her. it's sweet really."
So you're against obedience but you"re all for being protected? I pulled the sheet over us both and was trying to "protect" you when you slithered away and dumped me on the floor. You leaned over the edge of the bed showing some deliciously squeezed cleavage.
"That's the whole point, Patrick. The skirt thing is not about sex. Why can"t you be a gentleman like this Boaz character?"
"How can I be a gent when we"re naked together?"
On you went about how the skirt business could remind a modern reader of Bridget Jones being wrapped up in Mark Darcy"s overcoat. Which doesn't mean sex either but a happy ending blah blah.
"That"s what Halberd says. Isn"t that fascinating?"
I was kneeling by the bed.
"Not as fascinating as the fact that one of your nipples folds in on itself and the other one doesn't," I said. I was in the perfect position to see if the tip of my tongue would fit into the pinkish-brown half-centimetre, horizontal groove of the closer one. Again I got the shove.
"Patrick! You just don't get it, do you?"
"Wha?"
Your hands were flailing tantalisingly close to my body. You grabbed the book in both hands:
"Don't you see," you purred, "what this book's about? The obedience thing's a smoke screen, it's not about that, it's not even about God really. She"s using intertextuality to write about love."
Intertextuality. Ah yes, that stuff. The word buzzed into my head like a cartoon bee and flew out again. My academic years were behind me and were going to stay that way. You spanked Helen"s book deliciously.
"Halberd was in love with somebody," you said, "but she"s a priest so she can"t say it straight out. So she"s written this book. it's a love letter."
"What makes you think that?"
"I mean, look at the detail. She reaches for Boaz, look: "My finger rose to my lips, then moved across the greatest chasm in the world to the cleft of his lower lip...""
I reached for your lower lip and stroked it lightly.
"When are you seeing her again?" you asked.
"I haven't phoned her back yet."
"Make it soon. Look at these pictures. Here she is at Neil Sarbridge"s meeting. His GodSense thing at Wembley. That"s him there, look. They"re together."
I stretched up for a look in the central pages of the book.
And there they were, hand in hand on a laser-lit Wembley stage with her grinning at him fit to burst and him clocking the camera in an open-necked polo shirt with his grey beard blending down into chest hair, middle-sized, middle-aged and full of himself. With a deep cleft in his lower lip.
"You've got to bust him, Patrick."
"I can't. it's not my-"
"It's complete hell as long as he"s in the college, he"s got to go!"
"I'm only being paid to write about her. I"m not Miss bloody Marple."
You flounced off to the bathroom and slammed the door. What next? I thought, what fucking next? I got myself a medicinal beer and waited in the middle of the bed for about twenty minutes. What was I supposed to do? Put my own work on hold while I rid you of this turbulent arsehole? It was a bit much ...
You walked back in and stood, still naked, under the chandelier so that I could take in every detail. You could have removed my beer from my fist and replaced it with lemonade, I was that knocked out. I looked from your neatly trimmed pubic triangle, very nice, up your lovely little belly and deep navel to the two perfect pendulousnesses to … Lipstick. Blusher. Stuff on your eyelashes. Very nice. And there was a bruise beside your left eye the size of a wineglass, redness of a swollen lip below your left nostril and a dark splodge criss-crossed with blue and red on your chin. I hadn"t heard any noises of you knocking yourself about. You looked like something out of Night of the Living Dead. Or indeed St Matthew"s gospel.
"It's make-up. Feel." You lifted my hand and put it on the place where your lip was red. It came off on my fingertip.
"Wha?"
"But they won't know that when we"re at High Table in two hours time. I"m going to say you did it to me, and they"ll believe me, unless you dig out the scandal on the Dean!"