Walking Wounded Read Online Free PDF Page B

made a meal of it, like a Chinese carry-out. It might have seemed dull on the outside but the secret ingredients were exactly to the taste of his loneliness, all piquant implication and succulent innuendo. Like a gastronome of small talk, he knew exactly what it was made of.
    Incredibly enough, he had proved right. On each subsequent visit, the more he assumed the more his assumptions were welcomed. In a month he had asked her out to dinner. He took things slowly. He didn’t want the route taken to mar the view he imagined of the arrival. Like someone learning as much as he can about the country to which he wants to emigrate, John studied Sally carefully at meals, on visits to the pictures, in pubs, on walks. He came to know the bleakness of her marriage, interchangeable with a lot of other people’s, the fact that she hadn’t been with a man ina long time. He met her daughter, Christine, a nine-year-old with a disconcerting habit of talking to her mother as if he wasn’t there. He became familiar with the house, a flat with a lot of hanging plants (Sally had done a night class in macramé). Meanwhile, Sally had been taking lessons in John’s past.
    The night they graduated to bodies seemed to happen by mutual agreement. They had been eating out and were sitting chatting at the end of a good meal when they touched hands and knew at once what both of them wanted for afters. The waiter suggested liqueurs but John settled the bill and they went straight to Sally’s flat. The baby-sitter was watching a serial. They had a drink and began to regret their patience in moving towards this moment. John wondered if it was an omnibus edition of the serial. As the baby-sitter was eventually leaving, Christine got out of bed to discuss what she would have to take to school the next day for P.E. There was some doubt, apparently, about whether they would be in the gymnasium or outside.
    When Christine went back to her room and while they waited to make sure she was asleep, they kissed and touched each other in delicious preparation. Sally’s body was such an exciting place for his hands to wander in and her mouth felt so capable of swallowing his tongue that John was glad of the drinks he had had. He thought they would slow down his reactions nicely. It had been some time now since he had made love and he didn’t want to be finished before they had started.
    Sally broke away from him and went through to check on Christine. Coming back, she stood in the doorway with her mouth slightly open. She nodded.
    â€˜She sleeps through anything,’ Sally said. John came across to her and they led each other clumsily through to the bedroom.
    The room was a fully furnished annexe of John’s dreams. The lighting was from one heavily shaded lamp and itseeped a soft, blueish glow into the room. ‘The Blue Grotto’, John’s mind offered from somewhere, like homage. In the light the yellow walls seemed insubstantial. The bed, with the duvet pulled back, was fawn and inviting.
    As they undressed, Sally said, ‘I’m sorry about the Wendy House’.
    In his feverish preoccupation, John couldn’t understand what she meant. He thought at first that it might be a code expression. He wondered bizarrely if she was euphemistically telling him that her period was here. Then he lost his balance slightly taking off a sock and, turning as he steadied himself, he saw the cardboard structure against the wall. Sally was talking about a real Wendy House.
    â€˜There’s nowhere else to put it,’ she said. ‘If we put it in Christine’s bedroom, it fills the room.’
    He didn’t mind. It was certainly incongruous here, as if a femme fatale were discovered playing with her dolls. But in a way it added to the moment, he convinced himself – like making love in a fairy story. He was naked. Sally was naked. The beauty of her breasts owed nothing to the brassiere manufacturers. He