House of Silence Read Online Free Page B

head of the
household, or at least the most responsible member. I earned my own
living and I was pursuing a career. I wasn’t killing time until I
could bury myself alive with babies and soft furnishings. But nor
was I a girl-about-town, clubbing, drinking, sexually adventurous.
I liked sewing, reading, tending my houseplants, pottering about in
flea markets and Oxfam shops. I enjoyed old black and white movies
and I listened to Radio 4. On the basis of all this, more than one
ex-boyfriend had described me as “seriously weird”.
    The reasons for my eccentricity are not hard
to fathom. I’d seen, in gruesome detail, where partying got you:
drunk, diseased and dead. No wonder then if I chose to err on the
side of caution. From my “weird” point of view, Alfie had a lot
going for him. He drank very little. As far as I could tell, he
didn’t do drugs. He seemed thoroughly heterosexual despite
numerous, sometimes pressing invitations to widen his sexual
horizons. But he wasn’t a womaniser. An incorrigible flirt maybe,
but older women were more often favoured than young. The more
senior the grande dame , the more likely she was to receive
his attentions. I observed him at a party meeting Dame Judi Dench
for the first time. When she moved on to the next group of guests,
he turned back to me looking slightly dazed. He looked down at the
hand she’d shaken and claimed he wouldn’t wash for a week. Was the
reverence real? I think so, but you could never tell with
Alfie.
    He wasn’t the slightest bit threatening, to
me or anyone, nor did he seem to feel threatened by me. If
anything, I think he found my foibles amusing. We were a couple of
oddities. By the time we finally slept together - both stone cold
sober - we were already friends. We felt safe with each other. I
think we both realised that even if the sex was a disaster, we
would try again because we liked each other.
    But sex wasn’t a disaster. Far from it.
Alfie was as kind, attentive and funny in bed as out of it and, I
have to say, he looked a good deal better with his kit off than on.
I told him so and he said, ‘Damn. I’ve always suspected that. I
look taller naked, don’t I?’ For some reason he did. His was a
slender, wiry frame, more muscle than flesh, thanks to his
assiduous working out at the gym. Naked, he put me in mind of one
of Leonardo’s anatomical drawings, where you’re aware of the body
as a machine, how it’s put together, how all the different bits
work. When I was an art student we had to do a lot of drawing in
our foundation year. Even though textiles were my first love, I
enjoyed the challenge of figure drawing, trying to convey the body
beneath the clothes, the structure that supported them. Although
you couldn’t see much of the body in my sketches, I wanted the
viewer to have a sense it was there.
    That’s how it was with Alfie once our
relationship became sexual. I was always aware of the body beneath
the clothes, the steel behind the softness, another Alfie, rather
different from the one he presented to the world. Alfie stripped
for action was Alfie stripped in more senses than one. Divested of
clothing, he looked older, tougher, harder. Instead of the Bambi
brown eyes and the soft blond hair that said, “Ruffle me”, I was
aware of sinew and bone. The contrast was perplexing, but also
exciting.
    Dressed or undressed, Alfie was gorgeous. As
he himself put it on one of the many occasions I had trouble
keeping my hands off him, ‘Admit it, Gwen - you don’t stand a
chance. I’m sex on legs.’ Then he grinned and added, ‘ Short ones.’
    So everything was going really well.
    Until I mentioned Christmas.
    ~~~
    Turning the pages of a Sunday colour supplement, Gwen
glanced up at Alfie as he finished the last of his breakfast, then
said, with studied nonchalance, ‘How would you feel about spending
Christmas and New Year in Scotland? I’ve got the use of a flat in
Edinburgh. A friend’s going ski-ing and she’s happy for