I was reading ‘Beeny Cliff’ when Fred came in to the bedroom:
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free -
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
Glancing up covertly from my book from time to time I watched Fred getting ready for bed, undressing, going in and out of her bathroom, putting on her nightgown, and was rewarded with a glimpse of her generously curved but firm bottom and the profile of a shapely bare breast. The bottom is her own work, but the breast owes something to the surgeon’s art. A few years ago she had a breast-reduction operation. At the time I was against it on health and safety grounds (given all the infections rampant in hospitals these days only a life-threatening illness would persuade me to have an operation), and the sight of her bandages and stitches initially made me queasy, but I had to admit that the final result, when everything had invisibly healed, was stunning. At about the same time she joined the Health Club and began serious exercising, taking courses in yoga, clocking up miles on running machines and stretching herself out like a medieval martyr on racks attached to weights and pulleys, sculpting her matronly torso into an alluring hour-glass shape. This wasn’t done for my benefit, but as part of a general personal make-over accompanying her new career, which included dieting, hair-colouring and the substitution of contact lenses for spectacles. It all had its effect on me nevertheless, provoking an unexpected onset of what Betjeman called ‘late flowering lust’, adulterous in his case, uxorious in mine. As I sneaked glances at Fred’s routine and entirely uncoquettish preparations for bed I felt a stirring in the loins, and had to resist the temptation to slide my hand under her nightdress as she got between the sheets and turned on her side, knowing that in my tired and slightly tipsy state I would not be able to pursue any amorous overture to a satisfactory conclusion. I settled instead for a comfortable cuddle, fitting my body spoonwise to the curve of her bottom and putting an arm round her waist, a waist that didn’t exist five or six years ago. I chanted ‘Beeny Cliff ’ silently to myself and fell asleep somewhere in the last stanza:
What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman is now - elsewhere - whom the rambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.
I woke at three-thirty, probably because the effect of the alcohol had worn off, went for a pee, and tossed and turned for some time afterwards, unable to get back to sleep. I tried cuddling up to Fred again, but she shrugged me off, not with any conscious irritation, I believe - it was probably just a reflex action in her sleep - but the withdrawal of her warm body left me feeling rejected and vulnerable. My thoughts picked up from where they had left off when I fell asleep: sex with Fred, or rather not-sex with Fred, and Hardy’s elegy for his first wife, which led me into uncomfortable memories of Maisie.
I try not to think of Maisie too much. The last years of her life were so awful, not just for her, but for all of us. From the moment she told me she had found a lump under her armpit I knew with terrible certainty how it would end, but not how long it would take: the endless hospital appointments, the stuffy crowded waiting rooms, the anxious consultations, the operations and chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the brief periods of respite and hope, the unspeakable depression and despair when the next scans showed they had been delusory, the gradual mutation of the house into a hospice, first with the installation of a stair-lift, and then, when even that became too much for her to manage, the conversion of the lounge into a sick room with an en suite bathroom extension, and a Macmillan nurse calling daily. Maisie was determined to die at
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free -
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
Glancing up covertly from my book from time to time I watched Fred getting ready for bed, undressing, going in and out of her bathroom, putting on her nightgown, and was rewarded with a glimpse of her generously curved but firm bottom and the profile of a shapely bare breast. The bottom is her own work, but the breast owes something to the surgeon’s art. A few years ago she had a breast-reduction operation. At the time I was against it on health and safety grounds (given all the infections rampant in hospitals these days only a life-threatening illness would persuade me to have an operation), and the sight of her bandages and stitches initially made me queasy, but I had to admit that the final result, when everything had invisibly healed, was stunning. At about the same time she joined the Health Club and began serious exercising, taking courses in yoga, clocking up miles on running machines and stretching herself out like a medieval martyr on racks attached to weights and pulleys, sculpting her matronly torso into an alluring hour-glass shape. This wasn’t done for my benefit, but as part of a general personal make-over accompanying her new career, which included dieting, hair-colouring and the substitution of contact lenses for spectacles. It all had its effect on me nevertheless, provoking an unexpected onset of what Betjeman called ‘late flowering lust’, adulterous in his case, uxorious in mine. As I sneaked glances at Fred’s routine and entirely uncoquettish preparations for bed I felt a stirring in the loins, and had to resist the temptation to slide my hand under her nightdress as she got between the sheets and turned on her side, knowing that in my tired and slightly tipsy state I would not be able to pursue any amorous overture to a satisfactory conclusion. I settled instead for a comfortable cuddle, fitting my body spoonwise to the curve of her bottom and putting an arm round her waist, a waist that didn’t exist five or six years ago. I chanted ‘Beeny Cliff ’ silently to myself and fell asleep somewhere in the last stanza:
What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman is now - elsewhere - whom the rambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.
I woke at three-thirty, probably because the effect of the alcohol had worn off, went for a pee, and tossed and turned for some time afterwards, unable to get back to sleep. I tried cuddling up to Fred again, but she shrugged me off, not with any conscious irritation, I believe - it was probably just a reflex action in her sleep - but the withdrawal of her warm body left me feeling rejected and vulnerable. My thoughts picked up from where they had left off when I fell asleep: sex with Fred, or rather not-sex with Fred, and Hardy’s elegy for his first wife, which led me into uncomfortable memories of Maisie.
I try not to think of Maisie too much. The last years of her life were so awful, not just for her, but for all of us. From the moment she told me she had found a lump under her armpit I knew with terrible certainty how it would end, but not how long it would take: the endless hospital appointments, the stuffy crowded waiting rooms, the anxious consultations, the operations and chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the brief periods of respite and hope, the unspeakable depression and despair when the next scans showed they had been delusory, the gradual mutation of the house into a hospice, first with the installation of a stair-lift, and then, when even that became too much for her to manage, the conversion of the lounge into a sick room with an en suite bathroom extension, and a Macmillan nurse calling daily. Maisie was determined to die at
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