Cuckoo Read online

  Yet it was she who had made it sordid, by insisting on sperm instead of sensations. She had outlawed all ecstasy by setting up some pleasure-guilt ratio – if the one diminished, so would the other. But it hadn’t proved the case. There was a different, harsher ratio – the more torpid it was, the more reprehensible. She couldn’t even excuse herself on the grounds that she had been swept away by passion, or overruled by Ned’s tempestuous feelings.

  She was still surprised at Ned. After Brighton, she had expected something wilder, more akin to the last occasion she’d made love – well, hardly love, that time, the way Charles had forced her head against the floor and then rammed Magda into it. She had loathed his brutishness, yet there was something about it which now attracted her. Ned’s passive, flaccid, rudderless performance had made her realize that Charles’ thrust and vigour were not simply to be taken for granted as the norm.

  Ned was leaning over her, his hair dripping in her eyes. ‘I want you, Franny. I’ve wanted you ever since I found you in my front garden. Hold me, love. I want to have you properly.’

  She couldn’t say no. It was his bed, his sperm. She’d woken him up and she could hardly tell him to go back to sleep and forget it ever happened. Yet she didn’t want him near her, especially not that part of him coiling damp and soft against her thigh. She’d never thought much about size before. She’d taken Charles as her gauge and her yardstick, and assumed most men more or less matched up. But now she found they didn’t, it disturbed her.

  Ned grew an inch or two as she used her hands to fondle him. She had to repay him for the sperm. She only hoped he’d come on top of her – Rathbone had made it clear she mustn’t move. The egg had the best chance of being fertilized if she lay on her back with her legs drawn up. She drew them up still further, pretending she was excited by his mouth. The mouth moved lower down, rough chin scratching between her breasts, across her belly, and still on down. Suddenly, it had reached her thighs, his reckless tongue dipping and squeezing between them. She closed herself against him. That was not allowed. But, by drawing up her legs, she’d more or less encouraged him. He’d taken it as an open invitation, not just a practical procedure for retaining his sperm. Well, at least she needn’t move, just stay on her back and pretend it wasn’t happening.

  His face had almost disappeared between her legs, his fair hair shading off into her darker, coarser thatch, his nose squashed sideways against her thighs. She mustn’t look, or he’d think she was enjoying it. She was enjoying it. He was doing exquisite things with his teeth. His tongue felt barbed and dangerous. He was turning her inside out, adding pain to ecstasy, as he teased and nipped with his teeth and grazed his unshaven chin back and forth across her thighs. Part of her held back still, worrying and analysing in the prison of her head – she shouldn’t be enjoying it; he’d expect her to do it back; supposing he licked away all his own semen and lessened the chance of conception. No, the sperm were already in her, rushing for the egg like lemmings, all four hundred million of them. She could almost feel them plunging and shoving deeper into her womb, an exhilarating feeling, somehow connected with what Ned was doing deep between her legs. His chameleon tongue changed shape and speed and texture from minute to minute. He was licking secret, shameful places which had nothing to do with sex, cul-de-sacs which had been closed and private all her life. She spread her legs wider. Everything was opening for him, the sensations taking her over. She could feel her own mouth imitating his, her tongue searching for him, restless.

  ‘Ned,’ she shouted. ‘Ned!’ Her voice came from somewhere deeper than her mouth.

  He let his head move slowly up her belly. His face looked damp and crumpled, and his lips tasted strange when they fumbled against her own. No good recoiling – that was her own taste and smell – one she tried to drown with soap and douches. His tireless mouth was repeating what it had done further down. He had slipped his little finger between her lips, as well as his deft tongue, and there were incredible, tangled sensations she could only submit to. She had moved out of her head and into her mouth. She was no longer Frances, not even Franny, but just an object and an orifice. It was a shattering relief. All her life, sex had been monitored through her consciousness and conscience, obeying rules, observing boundaries, but now it had rebelled. She was suddenly a body – mouth, bowels, belly, arse – messy, sweaty, open.

  He had still not entered her. She thrust her thighs up and out towards him, almost forced him in. He still felt small, as if he had been swallowed up inside her. She tried to move in time to him, but he was too slow, too feeble. She longed for him to slam into her, on and on, until her mind shrivelled with disuse. He was moving now, though only very tentatively. She slowed herself down to suit him, and suddenly, he yelled ‘Christ!’ and then lay still.

  She was so wet already, she hardly knew he’d come. Her own body was still revving and thrusting underneath him, but there was nothing to fill or answer it. She tried to force him back, scooping up the small slippery thing between her hands and struggling to revive it.

  He was spent, exhausted, his whole weight flat against her. ‘You’re wonderful, Franny, glorious! Put your arms around me, hold me.’

  She didn’t want to hold him. She wanted to screw him. That wasn’t a Frances word. It had crept out of her new uncaged body and was crying out for a finale. She felt overwhelmed with contradictory feelings – white heat of frustration mixed with fury, amazement at the new, greedy whore she had become, but also a shame, a reticence, a slow return to the clogged, accusing strictures of her head.

  There were black crosses everywhere, a hundred for adultery, a thousand for enjoying it, two thousand for wanting more. She felt guilt and terror towards Charles, anger and gratitude to Ned, delight and horror at herself. A civil war was raging in this small, poky bedroom, and one of the chief combatants was sleeping through the gunfire, slumped across her chest. She tried to shift from underneath him, but he clung on like a baby.

  Baby! She’d forgotten all about babies for at least twenty minutes. God almighty! She was pregnant – she must be. Everything was primed. It was exactly day fourteen, the Clomid had made her super-fertile, all her tests were perfect anyway, Ned was young and virile, and above all, he was a different man with different sperm. If she was allergic to Charles’ semen, as Rathbone had hinted, then this new, gutsy brand would mean instant conception. Now she had caught up with Piroska, and was Charles’ equal in betrayal. A Ned for a Magda. She shivered. She didn’t want to be his equal. One of Charles’ attractions was that you could never catch up, not even in betrayal.

  Charles would know the child wasn’t his. It would be born with fair curly hair creeping down its navel, loll in its cot and never learn its alphabet. She could almost feel the foetus growing inside her, a soft-shelled, feckless thing, flinging its toys about, untidying her perfect houseproud womb. Cells adding to cells in the relentless drive towards creation; Ned’s slipshod chromosomes forcing hers apart, and fusing with them. It was an alien growth, a cancer, slow-growing and inexorable, totally indifferent as to whether she welcomed it, or cursed it.

  Even the act of conceiving it had totally confused her. Ned’s thrusting had been almost perfunctory. Charles could do it at full throttle for at least twelve minutes. He probably even timed it on his quartz digital alarm. And yet, all that time, she had never felt the wild, inside-out sensations which Ned’s mouth had exploded into her. Charles never moved his mouth any lower than her breasts. She tried now to imagine him, fusing Ned’s tongue on to Charles’ body and opening her legs, ashamed of her excitement. Not only had Ned impregnated her, he had turned her into some greedy, voracious slut, kindled strange new parts of her anatomy with wild new desires. And then he’d gone to sleep on top of them, leaving them still shouting out for more. He was crushing her limbs and lying on her hair, his mouth half open, one arm pinioning her chest.

  She stared up at the ceiling. The bedside light was still switched on and she could see the paint stained and flakin
g on the dirty walls, and the overhead bulb bare, without a shade. She longed to be in her own bedroom, with its old-rose ceiling and the fragile elegance of the Bohemian tear-drop chandelier. The bed was too small for both of them. The mattress dipped and bulged, and there was only one small pillow. She’d never get to sleep. Another man’s body was crushed on top of hers, another man’s baby sprouting in her womb.

  At least it was warm. There was something very comforting about lying against another naked body. She rarely did it. Charles always got up and took a shower after sex, and then returned to the chilly order of his own bed. There were a lot of things she rarely did. Her legs were still open. She trailed her hand down between them and left it there. She dared not move too much in case she woke Ned, but she turned her fingers into Ned’s mouth and Charles’ mast combined. The bed trembled in shock.

  Rilke slunk through the open door and sprang on top of her. His soft fur brushed against her thighs and added to the tangle of sensations between them. She lay with Ned’s weight against her breasts, and Rilke’s warmth purring through her, further down. She was exhausted, even sore, so many guilts and pleasures breeding in her body, she doubted if she’d ever sleep again. But she might as well relax. The situation was so bizarre, all she could do was lie back and accept it for the moment. It would be light by five o’clock. She’d wake Ned then, and make her getaway. Meantime, she’d try to lull her frantic mind – work out logarithms, recite the whole of Paradise Lost, anything to dull the screaming ache of what she’d done. Charles had given her Milton, all twelve volumes, vellum-bound, for her twentieth birthday.

  ‘Of man’s first disobedience and the fall …’

  It was noon when she woke. The sun was stampeding through the open curtains and the day smelled of toast. There were five hefty slices of it, glistening with butter, with Ned attached to them, trying to balance the marmalade on the teapot and kiss her, all at once.

  ‘Your petit déjeuner, madame. Devilled kidneys on a silver salver, smoked Orkneys haddock in a chafing dish … and Tesco’s tuppence-off teabags. Sleep well?’

  ‘Mmmm …’ She couldn’t have slept. She had eleven and three-quarter more books of Paradise Lost to work through, and at least eight hours of guilt.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t be hungry. She was a wicked, unfaithful, pregnant, feckless bitch. An insomniac who’d lost her appetite.

  He fed her with three-quarters of the toast and three mugs of tea, and tickled crumbs across her naked tummy. Rilke sat on her left foot and Werther licked butter from the empty plate. Ned spread the Daily Mail across the bed and thumbed through it for the horoscopes.

  ‘Right, here we are – Virgo. ‘‘Stay in bed all day today and don’t venture out. Intimate encounters with a fair, mysterious stranger can only prove fruitful.’’’

  Frances tried to laugh. Fruitful – that terrifying, marvellous word. ‘You’re making it up, Ned. It probably says ‘‘Business interests prosper’’, or something boring like that.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. It says ‘‘Stay in bed with lovely Ned.’’ Which is halfway to a poem. Come on, love, move over. I don’t see why Rilke can lie on top of you, if I can’t.’

  ‘Look, Ned, I ought to get back …’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Well, Charles …’

  ‘He’s away.’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘How long will he be gone?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Roughly.’

  ‘Three or four days, maybe.’

  ‘OK, I’ll settle for that. Three or four days in bed with Ned, and if the Daily Mail allows it, we’ll get up on Friday. No, don’t start objecting. I want to kiss you and it tickles if you talk. Shove up a bit, love, I’m falling out of bed.’

  ‘Ned, I …’

  ‘Hush, love. You taste of lemon marmalade, and I want some more of it. Look, we’ll do it six times today, seven tomorrow, ten on Thursday, and go to Confession on Friday. Right? Right!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Friday. Charles shut his eyes against the sugar-coated smile of the air hostess. He wished to God they’d leave a man alone. He didn’t need all those airborne little simpers and the swish of skirts and petticoats interrupting his work, and no, he didn’t want a cocktail, and yes, he did have a headache, but if only they’d remove themselves, he might feel slightly better.

  He finished his report on the prosecution, making it sound less messy than it was. His own private report, locked inside his head, was a lot more damaging. He’d been reprimanded by the judge, in open court. Thank God Oppenheimer wasn’t present at the time. But afterwards, King Heinrich had made it almost worse by being so magnanimous. That cold, well-mannered smile, that unctuous bottle of chilled Dom Pérignon, so cruelly inappropriate. It was humiliating, shameful.

  He heard Mr Justice Lambton’s damp-flannel voice echoing round the plane. ‘Uncooperative, evasive in his evidence, muddled in his presentation.’ He was never muddled – evasive maybe, but always clear, efficient. The whole damned business seemed to have fouled up right from the beginning. The crazy heat, the bungled advocacy, and worst of all, Frances’ hysterical phone calls. She had never behaved like that before, filling his head so full of her obsessions, that he himself had lain awake in the frigid, air-conditioned Nassau nights, counting day thirteen, day fourteen, too late. The worst part was the small trickle of relief when it was too late, knowing that he couldn’t be blamed, that a chance hitch in a court case had kept a child unconceived.

  He couldn’t risk a second round of fatherhood. The tie between parent and child was so close, so extraordinary, that if it failed, it took a gash out of your life. Magda had already chipped away at his defences. Even as a foetus, she had wormed her way between him and Piroska, and maimed the relationship. When she was born, he’d felt real pride, excitement, but only at a distance. And now that he had moved his daughter close to him, into the soul and strongbox of his house, she was threatening its very fabric, driving a wedge between him and Frances. And yet, Magda was so much part of him, that his anger was directed chiefly at himself, his own failure to love or control her.

  He was failing Frances, too. Her phone calls only underlined it. He had tried to blot them out and fantasize about her, as a wife without a womb, the way she had been before Rathbone poked his prying speculum into their bedroom. She still excited him, her small, fastidious body, with its cool, tight, unadulterated innocence. He had missed her, genuinely. It was damned lonely jetting round the world, one aseptic hotel room a carbon copy of the rest, except the furniture was differently arranged. He often wondered why they couldn’t enforce a standard layout for all executive suites – bed here, cupboard there. At least a man wouldn’t have endlessly to adapt; wake up with his feet facing north in Tokyo, when they’d been south in Singapore; look out of a window that had turned into a wall; reach for a light-switch which wasn’t there – reach for a woman who wasn’t there – only the cold rump of a bolster rejecting his advances. Sheraton and Intercontinental probably planned it on purpose, to underline the fact that you were an everlasting exile in hotels. As soon as you’d signed with your American Express card, the sheets were stripped, the room deodorized, all traces of you aerosoled away, and the bed resterilized for another transient to toss and turn in.

  Endless chit-chat with cardboard people, interchangeable faces and switch-on smiles. Self-important uniforms disguising empty robots – stewardesses, waiters, court officials, switchboard operators. And when, at last, your own wife came on the line, still no comfort or communion, only sobbing and reproaches. Laura had been as bad. Even she had phoned him, her water-bed drawl cooing snide remarks about his coming back with another little Magda, a Bahamian baby this time, via the chambermaid. Christ! All the female staff could have been flat-chested paraplegics with psoriasis, for all he cared. He’d been grappling with fraud and high finance, not chambermaids; Nemesis, not Eros. And yet, both the women in his life had
belly-ached on about babies, as if nothing ever happened in the world above groin level. He shifted his own groin in the padded, ergonomic seat and watched the dazzle of the blue Atlantic fade and dwindle into grey cloud. The plane seemed to fill with females, all demanding, all disappointed in him. Laura pacing up and down empty hotel bedrooms, Magda begging him for dogs and cats and ponies, Frances scrounging non-existent sperm. He wished to God he could return to an empty house, without a daughter or a mistress, without even a wife. He’d missed them when they were safely half a world away, but now the distance had shrunk to half an hour, he didn’t want them back. At least, not yet. Just a few female-less days to recover from the court case and catch up with his other clients. Perhaps he’d go directly from the airport to the office. He could shut himself away there, tell his secretary he wanted no interruptions, not even any phone calls. He closed his eyes for touch-down, the roar of the jets as the engines reversed, the synthetic stewardess still oozing saccharin, the jostle and jar of customs.

  ‘Charlie!’

  Christ, no, not Laura. He’d forbidden her to come. Yes, he knew she always met him from the airport, but things would have to change. The whole advantage of a mistress was that she only turned up when you ordered her.

  ‘Look, Laura, I told you …’

  ‘I know, Charlie darling, but I’ve got a little piece of news for you that simply couldn’t wait. It’s really rather priceless.’