Bread and Chocolate Read online

  She swam until the water was not salt, but sweet: river water flowing from an inland lake, brackish and warm. She swam up the furtive channels of the mighty flooded river and watched the water change from deep brown to amber to golden; and become warmer. Only after swimming for what seemed like hours and hours, a lifetime, did Lady Emily’s waterlogged feet scrabble gently in soft sand, as she stood upright, and waded to the shore.

  She was on a little beach, a half-crescent of white sand bordered with the thick tangle of undergrowth. As she paused, uncertain, a tiny snake, brilliantly striped, slithered away from her shadow into the tangle of knotted branches, creepers and roots. Lady Emily crossed her arms over her naked breasts and felt the equatorial sun burn the salty skin of her back.

  There was a man in the shadow of the trees, watching her. Lady Emily stepped forward, out of the water, her bare feet moving without fear across the hot sand, stepping without hesitation into the undergrowth to stand before him. Then she lowered her arms and let him see her nakedness.

  Wordlessly he stepped towards her and rested his light brown hands on her bare shoulders. At his touch Lady Emily closed her eyes. She felt the softness of his lips on her neck, his caress brush down over her breast, the faint flickering promise of his tongue at her navel, then he bore her down to the ground and his fingers and then his tongue penetrated deep inside her. Lady Emily groaned and twisted her hands in his dark curly hair, pulling him closer and closer. She slid her hands over his shoulders and down his naked back, pulling him up so that she could kiss his wet mouth which tasted of brine and river water. She pulled at his loincloth and it tumbled away. She gave a little moan of desire and opened herself to him, flowing into the rhythm and sounds of lust, moving with him, just as she had swum towards him: with easy purposeful, powerful motions until her muscles clenched and held, and pleasure flooded through her like flood water down a dry river bank.

  ‘Twenty,’ Lady Emily said with quiet satisfaction. She heaved herself out of the pool and sat for a moment on the side, feeling the water drain from her thick costume, enjoying the tremor of tiredness in her old body, and the glazed luxurious half-drunk rapture in her mind. She smiled and whispered, like an incantation: ‘Enjoy. Enjoy.’

  The If Game

  ‘If you were my mistress I’d drive you home and cook your breakfast,’ James said. His roguish smile warned her not to take him too seriously. ‘We’d go back to your flat, and I’d cook your breakfast for you.’

  Before them were two plates of eggs and bacon: the best the canteen could provide. They had both finished their morning shifts – he had been under the hot lights of the television studio, while she worked in the newsroom of the radio station on the floor above. They often met for breakfast, the studios were darkened and quiet in the early winter mornings. A couple of times that winter it had snowed and they had watched the white flakes against the dark sky. Then he had started playing the If game.

  ‘Oh, if I were your mistress I should live in a hotel,’ Sarah replied. ‘You would come back to my suite and we would have champagne and croissants.’

  ‘I would bring you champagne and croissants to your flat,’ he said, making the game more immediate. ‘Serve them to you in your bath. D’you have a bath when you get home? I long for one but the twins are nearly always in the bathroom and by the time they’re out, I’m caught up with something else.’

  ‘I have a bath and then I have a sleep,’ she said. ‘There are some benefits to being a single woman.’

  ‘There are no benefits at all to being a married man. I work all the hours God sends, and then I can’t get into my own bathroom. The only benefit would be a delicious secret affair with a wonderful mistress.’ He looked at her and smiled his wicked smile. ‘You.’

  ‘Oh, I think I would like that,’ she said. She pushed her plate away and lit a cigarette. She looked at him from under her eyelashes. ‘You could pamper me.’

  He felt suddenly excited and confident. ‘If you were my mistress I should pamper you enormously,’ he said. ‘Enormously.’

  She gave a quick schoolgirl giggle at the double entendre, and he felt more and more certain that soon, she would say ‘yes’.

  ‘Well!’ he said lightly. He felt the quick rush of adrenaline, like a gambler when he impulsively stakes a fortune on a single number. He was addicted to the thrill of seduction. ‘What about tomorrow?’

  When she looked up at him he could almost hear the click of the croupier’s wheel. ‘Champagne,’ she stipulated. ‘And croissants.’

  ‘Lanson black label,’ he promised.

  ‘If you were my wife I should spend all day in bed with you,’ he said. ‘These early morning shifts are killers.’

  They were in Sarah’s bed as usual. From the window of her little flat she could see the fat buds of a horse chestnut tree, splitting under the pressure of the bursting leaves. She stroked a finger down the recessed line of his spine.

  ‘If I were your wife I should collect you from the studio and take you home to bed,’ she promised.

  ‘Not with a pair of twins in the house,’ James said. He got out of bed and stretched. ‘If I get this London job, you could move to London too.’ He slipped on his shirt and pulled on his trousers. ‘I’d only go home at the weekends.’

  ‘If I were your wife I’d keep you where I could see you,’ she remarked. She sat up in bed and clasped her knees. Her arms and shoulders were lightly tanned. She had gone to North Africa at the end of February with a girlfriend. She had lain in the sun all day and dreamed of him. She had refused to dance, to drink, or go sailing, with other men because they were not him. She was, instinctively, a faithful woman.

  ‘If you were my wife I’d stay home,’ he said with a smile, pulling on his socks. He stepped into his shoes. He kept his aftershave, hairbrush, and deodorant on her dressing table. In her bathroom was his toothbrush, his towelling robe, his favourite soap.

  ‘You’re going to the reception tonight, aren’t you?’ he asked. He slipped his jacket on and smoothed his tie, looking at himself in her mirror once more. His good looks were his career qualifications, he checked them as a clever man might do IQ tests.

  ‘I’ve been invited,’ she said. ‘But isn’t Miriam coming?’

  He shook his head. ‘Babysitter crisis,’ he said. ‘Shall we meet there and go on for dinner? She won’t expect me home till late.’

  ‘Lovely,’ she said. At once her plans for the day and evening were drastically reshaped. She would wear a different dress, she would skip lunch. She would get her hair done. She would change the sheets on the bed in case he chose to come back after dinner. She was careful to keep the excitement from her voice that the If game had become a game of planning a future together. ‘If we were both in London we could get a flat.’

  He smiled for her but it was the mirror which caught the glow. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said. ‘We’d have to be discreet, but it could probably be managed. Miriam would never leave Bristol. She’s a home-town girl. If I’m going to London it’ll have to be alone – or with you.’

  Sarah slid from the bed and stood behind him, her arms embracing him, her warm thin body against him. ‘With me,’ she said fervently. ‘With me.’

  They rented a small flat in a modern block. He told Miriam he had a place, little more than a bedsit, nothing special. He moved in the day after one of the twins fell off his tricycle. Miriam spent all day and most of the night at the hospital while the doctors X-rayed and then set the boy’s broken arm and wrist. James had been forced to pack for himself, and to leave an empty house. ‘If I were your wife you’d come first,’ Sarah said.

  James was soothed by the flat. Sarah had worked hard all weekend. It was furnished in a light airy style, the walls were pale distemper. There was an expensive hi-fi in one corner and a small television. The floors were shiny boards with occasional bright rugs. Sarah had spent the best part of her first month’s wages on it. ‘If you were my wife we would be lovers first and parents afte