Telegram Books: Extract from Gael

Judith Mok

We had agreed to meet for lunch at Fouquet's, the restaurant where James Joyce used to go with his entire family and hand over enormous tips to the headwaiter. I had to be thinking of the Irish connection, of course. I kept humming cheerful tunes, walking all the way up the Avenue Foch, all the way down the Champs-Elysées. Looking at the trees, smelling the spring in the breeze, waving at a man in a car: forget about sex, forget about it and don't turn it into that emotion that you do not want to hear about, so just forget about the sex.

I had paraded a second lace skin in front of my husband the night before. He had sat behind his desk, his legs slightly apart, flawless fold in his casual trousers gazing at my underwear, my high heels. A tinge of sadness in his eyes. I took advantage of that and cajoled him into my consoling him. We had a short struggle with sex, as short as the word itself. He sighed into the pillows and admitted to admiring my outfit. It just did not turn him on. My body, after all, was an empty orbit.

Walk. Forget that he is naked behind you, and worse, his long fingers in you, on you. His hands stroking your skin, that magnetic field drawing them closer to a firm grip. Male. I had that long, dull poem to be recited along every walk I took.

He told me over oysters and lobster, his manicured hand resting peacefully on the damask tablecloth, that he had found a flat for my protégé.

His answer to my raised eyebrows was that he had checked my credit card accounts; the young artist did not come cheap. The gesture was cold: my answer was a photograph of the Irishman kissing me passionately, which I put down beside his plate.

In that case, he thought, I should take another trip over there, just to say goodbye and put an end to the whole business.

He took my arm and we strolled to a travel agency.
I spoke to him on the phone. No need to collect me. He was just about to forget all about me, about time I came to see him. So he said.

If things were like that I might as well throw my ticket away. But no, I was what he wanted and I was just going over there to show him he was not ever, ever going to get me. That time he did pick me up, and took me straight to his bed in a filthy cold room.

His canvases stood around doing most of the talking for him. I just explained the facts to him. We were not to meet again. He laughed and said it was fine, fine with him.

We had two days of loving to do.

Could we sleep somewhere else, I wondered, after I struggled for a while to find my clothes amidst the ruins of his belongings. Ah sure, we could go out and phone a friend who lived in his grandfather's house. A beautiful big redbrick. I was marched along a gloomy street. Drizzle hung around us. I didn't take account of the dull facades very well until we reached our roof for the night. We entered the sombre hall. It was late. The friend showed us to his grandfather's bedroom. The old man was in the country, so we could use his bed. I undressed my freezing body and pulled back the bedclothes. On the sheet was a long, dry, shredded piece of skin. I suggested the old man must have been a reptile. And I could not rest in a reptile's nest. We went downstairs and called our host. Not a muscle in his face moved when he heard our complaint. Granddad was not a great one for changing the sheets, but there should be some clean ones in the bottom drawer. They were his Grandda's wedding present. We found them and enjoyed the fifty-year-old dust in our dreams.

For breakfast we met a girl who did not introduce herself. In order to avoid the sausages I listened to her talk. She was all praise for the house, she was from the countryside and they had a toilet outside in the yard. I couldn't believe my ears. The girl kept on talking. She was away with the animals on the farm and the fire they had to keep going. There was a sickening smell of hot, dead fat.

I fled outside. A group of born-again Christians were singing in the garden next door.

It was tuneless and messy; their singing pulled at my fragile nerves. Back in the kitchen the girl was now wiping the remains of her breakfast from her face with the back of her hand. At least she had stopped talking.

He took me to a show, and once the lights went out quickly found his way under my large silk skirt. At the back of the theatre it was cosy and warm. I'd forgotten to put on my knickers that morning.

We met girls from his past on a lot of grim street corners. They all shook their fingers at me in warning. Not that they wouldn't sort of meet up with him again themselves, but just the occasional thing, you know. I did know. Could I at least see the shadow of one of his true crimes before leaving, I asked him? He laughed. He was still laughing when I turned around to wave. The relief I felt was because I was due to leave that country, not him. Not him. But his time was up.

Posted by Admin on September 29, 2005 07:05 PM to Telegram Books