Boys and Girls Read Free

perimeter – the limit, my boundaries. Beyond them it becomes almost Catholic and hysterical in its purposeful blindness; in order to remain yourself, the demands of faith must not encompass your leaving behind all reason. So I could go on believing in Alan, you see, only up until the moment when he faltered and doubted himself – then, I think, we both of us felt immediately rather stupid, for having wandered, wide-eyed and parallel in a dream of our own concoction, and for quite so long. We should all know, really, shouldn’t we, that the defining features of dreams are that they are not real and that one does wake up, and out of them. And yet their warm and languorous embrace (the harlot promise of a ready bliss)is so very headily seductive that we are tricked every time into believing the illusion – then comes the plummet, and we are grasping blindly and with such desperation, at the scattering spangles of a now dowdy mirage, mocking us and fading before our very eyes. There can be few crueller moments than a rough and reluctant awakening. I would never say this, or anything like it, if Alan were around. I always do, though, think it.
    In a way, it might be said that I rescued him. We both of us pretended otherwise at the time, of course (if we were already pretending, then … it maybe hadn’t yet come to it: no, I have to suppose that right at the very beginning it wouldn’t have, really). I had this small but terribly attractive flat in the very best part of Chelsea, thanks to my darling father (heaven knows I miss it, and I miss him too). I never had a job, not really, never really wanted one. I knew that I always had needed a man to look after me (cherish, spoil, adore and ravish me would all have been lovely, but just looking after, I could have coped with that). Because I am so beautiful and clever – and no, there is no point at all in talking down or gigglingly blushing over the very evident truth of the matter: I have always possessed this luscious and almost liquid ability to raise or reduce any man at all to the level at which he clearly belongs. And so because of this, I suppose that my Daddy was simply assuming that someone maybe even as wonderful as he would some day come along (not possible, as we both of us knew) and that until that day he’d be happy to keep me warm and safe, and gently ticking over. And there were men, of course there were – I soon grew weary of their constant and really quite overwhelming attentions. If I had ever to slip out quickly to a supermarket for some soup cartons or a quiche,say, I took to consciously making myself as hideous as a beauty can ever be – headscarf, flats, no make-up – simply to avoid some or other hopeful, oh God –
boulevardier
utterly revelling in his own ready wit, in his cool audacity – and canvassing my views on this or that bouillon, asking me constantly if I lived around here, suggesting that we could do worse than to pool the fruits of our trolley and basket, add much burgundy and hie away to rustle up something impromptu, somewhere nearby. Always they thought their approach so original – either brash and very cocksure, which I hate, just hate (unlike assurance and a true and manly confidence, which I am not sure I have ever encountered, except in my father), or else there would be a coy and stuttering attempt at boyishness, so pink and appealing in a puppydog way, and this of course I loathe even more – as I do puppydogs, as a matter of fact. Kittens too – they make me squirm. It is not that I wish any animal harm – and nor, I suppose, was I ever moved to react with violence to the endless strings of young and old men who perpetually were annoying me; I just never wanted to touch, that’s all, not have them brushing against me, neither licking nor purring. And then suddenly – and how and why on earth in the world do these