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were so slim, Gandie,â she says, reverently. âAnd so beautiful.â
What she actually means is, I was so young. I am not plump even now, when slender has metamorphosed into bony and slight given way to lean; but I was svelte then, and lissom, and young. And, yes, beautiful, damn it. I am nearly as impressed as Sophie is by my willowy waist, my high breasts, my graceful arms.
She wants to know who everybody in the photos is: she recognises Zoë as bridesmaid, and my mother, and Steveâs parents. It takes ages, as we go through it all: she wants to know what the cake was made of, and what sort of shoes I wore, and what the menu was. The menu? No, I canât for the life of me remember the menu. Didnât I keep a copy? No, I didnât. Or, if I did, itâs long since gone, vanished down the obliterating slippery slide of discarded keepsakes.
The honeymoon? Well, yes, a week in Tasmania: not an inspired choice in June (so cold, the air so perishing cold in your lungs), but cheap and I suppose picturesque. We were keen on bushwalking (or at any rate Steve was and I pretended to be so), and went tramping around Cradle Mountain. I guess we enjoyed it.
The first night together? Yes, a city hotel. That part is fairly clear in my mind. I had not stayed before in such five-star splendour: the heart-shaped pink soaps, the flowers and chilled champagne thoughtfully ordered by Steve. It was all ravishing, and I was brimful of the novel delectable nature of my world as I undressed and showered and arranged the new white lacy nightie over my shoulders, tweaking it down to make it more revealing.
How strange it is to remember happiness when one has come since to realise its cause was so superficial, so mistaken. Memory is like layers, needing to be peeled off: finally you have done with the endless stripping, the painstaking unwrapping and reconstructing; finally you arrive at the kernel and see how pathetic and wizened it was, really, after all.
Not that making love was a source of great contentment, even in those days. I was already familiar with Steveâs style in bed: the dog, the baker, the jackhammer. First he pawed me, hesitantly, like a dog whoâs desperate for approval. Then he became excited and started to knead my sparse flesh, as if he thought I was made of dough and would eventually rise if he expended enough energy. And then he lost all control: Iâm sure I donât need to describe the jackhammer phase to you. But I knew nothing else, at that stage. And itâs like poverty: if itâs all youâve known, you donât miss wealth.
I had hazy notions of climax and pleasure, but I thought these would occur at some distance into the marriage, when we knew more about each otherâs bodies, when we had fairly launched ourselves on the broad surge of marriage and togetherness, when presumably a more sophisticated lovemaking would supersede these first crude experiments, when ⦠when ⦠when.
But the worst came later. Although we had made love, we had never actually spent a night together. We had never, literally, slept together. I had envisaged a period of lying in each otherâs arms, whispering, murmuring, touching, sharing secrets, exchanging our sleepy, contented impressions of the wedding, me falling asleep on Steveâs wide warm chest, within his strong embrace. But after Steve had penetrated me and obtained his staccato climactic peak, he patted my stomach benignly, muttered something bleary, and hunched himself over, falling asleep within a minute.
I lay there, disconcerted and trying not to feel deserted. It had been a big day, of course; and when he had got his speech over and done with heâd knocked back a few wines, and I was sure there was every excuse for fatigue; but I had expected something a little more conversational, a little more ⦠well, attentive. Courteous. Some demonstration of consideration, of husbandly care.
And then, just
What she actually means is, I was so young. I am not plump even now, when slender has metamorphosed into bony and slight given way to lean; but I was svelte then, and lissom, and young. And, yes, beautiful, damn it. I am nearly as impressed as Sophie is by my willowy waist, my high breasts, my graceful arms.
She wants to know who everybody in the photos is: she recognises Zoë as bridesmaid, and my mother, and Steveâs parents. It takes ages, as we go through it all: she wants to know what the cake was made of, and what sort of shoes I wore, and what the menu was. The menu? No, I canât for the life of me remember the menu. Didnât I keep a copy? No, I didnât. Or, if I did, itâs long since gone, vanished down the obliterating slippery slide of discarded keepsakes.
The honeymoon? Well, yes, a week in Tasmania: not an inspired choice in June (so cold, the air so perishing cold in your lungs), but cheap and I suppose picturesque. We were keen on bushwalking (or at any rate Steve was and I pretended to be so), and went tramping around Cradle Mountain. I guess we enjoyed it.
The first night together? Yes, a city hotel. That part is fairly clear in my mind. I had not stayed before in such five-star splendour: the heart-shaped pink soaps, the flowers and chilled champagne thoughtfully ordered by Steve. It was all ravishing, and I was brimful of the novel delectable nature of my world as I undressed and showered and arranged the new white lacy nightie over my shoulders, tweaking it down to make it more revealing.
How strange it is to remember happiness when one has come since to realise its cause was so superficial, so mistaken. Memory is like layers, needing to be peeled off: finally you have done with the endless stripping, the painstaking unwrapping and reconstructing; finally you arrive at the kernel and see how pathetic and wizened it was, really, after all.
Not that making love was a source of great contentment, even in those days. I was already familiar with Steveâs style in bed: the dog, the baker, the jackhammer. First he pawed me, hesitantly, like a dog whoâs desperate for approval. Then he became excited and started to knead my sparse flesh, as if he thought I was made of dough and would eventually rise if he expended enough energy. And then he lost all control: Iâm sure I donât need to describe the jackhammer phase to you. But I knew nothing else, at that stage. And itâs like poverty: if itâs all youâve known, you donât miss wealth.
I had hazy notions of climax and pleasure, but I thought these would occur at some distance into the marriage, when we knew more about each otherâs bodies, when we had fairly launched ourselves on the broad surge of marriage and togetherness, when presumably a more sophisticated lovemaking would supersede these first crude experiments, when ⦠when ⦠when.
But the worst came later. Although we had made love, we had never actually spent a night together. We had never, literally, slept together. I had envisaged a period of lying in each otherâs arms, whispering, murmuring, touching, sharing secrets, exchanging our sleepy, contented impressions of the wedding, me falling asleep on Steveâs wide warm chest, within his strong embrace. But after Steve had penetrated me and obtained his staccato climactic peak, he patted my stomach benignly, muttered something bleary, and hunched himself over, falling asleep within a minute.
I lay there, disconcerted and trying not to feel deserted. It had been a big day, of course; and when he had got his speech over and done with heâd knocked back a few wines, and I was sure there was every excuse for fatigue; but I had expected something a little more conversational, a little more ⦠well, attentive. Courteous. Some demonstration of consideration, of husbandly care.
And then, just
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