Misspent Youth

18. LATE HONEYMOON

JEFF GOT HOME from the Chinese restaurant just before ten o’clock. The meal had gone pretty much as he’d predicted, and to cap it off, the food hadn’t been much good.

He hadn’t expected Sue to be home, not so early, but her Merc was standing in the garage when he parked. She was sitting on the big couch in the living room, wrapped in an emerald bathrobe, drinking a brandy and eating a bumper box of Thornton’s chocolates. Casablanca was playing on the three-meter wall screen, black-and-white images casting a cool spectral hue across the room.

“You’re back early,” he said.

Sue produced an insincere smile. “Yeah. Didn’t much feel like a night out.”

“I know what you mean. I could have done without tonight myself.”

“How are James and Alan?”

Jeff sighed and flopped down onto the couch beside her. “Oh God, Alan was crying into his beer most of the time. And James was just being James; ranting about Brussels, and taxes, and money and then more money. I’ve heard it all a million times before.” He wondered what had happened with her and Patrick. A quarrel? It would have to be something pretty drastic to make Sue binge on chocolate. She was normally inhumanly strict about her diet.

“James has always been just James,” she said. “I thought that’s why you were such good friends with him.”

“Yeah well, maybe my perspective has shifted a little lately.”

“Hardly surprising.”

“Oh?” He leaned over and plucked the hazelnut swirl from the box.

“You don’t have anything in common anymore, do you? They’re pensioners in every respect. You’re a twenty-year-old in every respect but one.”

“Which one?”

“Experience. Apart from that, you’ve got your whole life to look forward to, and that makes you eager and optimistic. That’s the opposite of them. They have nothing to look forward to; they hate the way the world is and the way it treats them. You relish change and challenge.”

“I would have thought that experience makes me cautious, especially about change.”

Sue grinned. “It means you can avoid the mistakes that Tim and his friends are about to spend the next fifteen years making. You’ll enjoy yourself a hell of a lot more this time around.”

“Maybe so.” He munched happily on the chocolate as he looked at her. That small smile, the way one side of her mouth lifted slightly higher than the other, was fascinating. Sue had always been staggeringly beautiful, but it was a notion that had never quite connected for him. It was beauty as abstract; he admired her as he might admire a statue or painting. For nearly nineteen years he’d held that view. Now, though, sitting beside her on the sofa, there were other factors coming into play. How close she was. The thick smell of some perfume or lotion applied to her skin. The way the robe was slightly loose down the front, showing just a hint of her breasts. Legs, long and smooth, curled up comfortably like some jungle cat ready to pounce. And that smile…

Jeff realized with some surprise he was actually quite turned on by his own wife.

“Definitely so,” Sue said. “It couldn’t be any other way.”

Jeff looked away, partially to cover his slight embarrassment. Then he saw what was playing on the screen. “Oh my God, that’s Ronald Reagan.”

“Who?”

“Ronald Reagan, he’s playing Rick.”

Sue frowned at the black-and-white images. “So?”

“Humphrey Bogart is Rick. What kind of version are you accessing, a satire?”

“I don’t know. The datasphere had quite a few editions listed, I think I chose the as-it-should-be version.”

He laughed. “Of course, Reagan supposedly auditioned for the part. That find-and-replace morphing technique is very good. I wonder what program they used….” He caught himself and grimaced. “Sorry, I’ve been talking this kind of complete crap all night with the boys. So what did happen to you this evening?”

Sue lowered her head, allowing her thick hair to fall forward and cover her face. “I went to see Mummy this afternoon.”

“Ah. Right. How is she?”

“Not very good.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“Oh, hey.” His arm went out automatically, reaching for her. He stopped with his fingertips a few centimeters away from her arm. After a moment’s hesitation he gave her a supportive little squeeze.

Sue looked up, waterlogged eyes regarding him with mild surprise.

“She’s a tough old thing,” he said. “She’ll pull through.”

“No, Jeff, she won’t. She’s getting a lot worse.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled himself along the couch and put his arm around her shoulder. She was shaking.

“I guess I don’t make it any easier for you,” he said. “Not with me like this.”

“No. I’m pleased they chose you, of course I am.” Tears started to fall down her cheeks. She smeared them with her knuckles, then gave her hands an angry look, as if they’d betrayed her.

“Is it going to be…soon?” he asked.

“No. But…”

“What?” he asked gently.

“They can’t look after her at the Hall, not anymore. She needs a proper nursing home: twenty-four-hour staff, specialist doctors, physical therapists.”

“Are there any places like that around here?”

“Some, yes.”

“Then no problem, we’ll put her into one.”

Sue blinked away her tears, giving him a curious gaze. “Do you mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“Jeff, it’ll cost a lot of money.”

“So? We had a deal, remember?”

“I know. But I thought… Tim’s already eighteen. Not that I ever really lived up to my side of the bargain when it came to being a good mother. He’ll be off to university in a few months anyway. That’s it then, isn’t it? The end.”

Jeff tightened his hold around her shoulders. “I thought you were a pretty good mother, actually. It has never been so hard to bring kids up than in today’s world; there are so many pitfalls waiting for him, so many dark attractions. Yet he’s come out of it a good kid. He’s no Stepford child, thank God, but he isn’t in jail, or rehab, or therapy, he doesn’t hate us too much, and he’s worked hard enough at school to make Cambridge a near certainty. I couldn’t wish for more. I’m damn proud of him. And you have to take a lot of credit for that. You pulled off your side of the arrangement perfectly.”

Sue’s small smile had returned. “I never did deserve you, did I?”

“I always thought of it as being the other way round.”

They kissed.

“That was never part of the arrangement,” Sue murmured huskily. Her nose nuzzled his cheek.

Jeff smiled down at her. “Time to negotiate a new one.”

THEY USED HIS BEDROOM, undressing in a warm mock-twilight thrown out by the wall lights. He couldn’t stop staring at her; it was a revelation, seeing what he’d been denied for nearly twenty years.

“Everything came out in full working order then,” Sue teased archly as she stood in front of him. Her eyes lingered on his erect cock.

“Built to the highest Brussels specifications.”

“To hell with Brussels.” Her hand closed round his balls. “These belong to me now.”

There was an urgency to her lovemaking he hadn’t expected. And she was deliciously talented; time and again after he believed himself spent she proved him wrong. He’d never guessed than even his fresh new body was so physically capable. It was a discovery they both took a savage joy in celebrating, carrying on into the early hours.

Eventually they broke apart.

“The real you.”

“And you.”

“Yes, finally. And I like it.”

“Good.”