My Lies, Your Lies - Susan Lewis Page 0,57
week I felt as though I was floating on air, somewhere distant from my friends though I could see and hear them and even respond to what they said. My thoughts were solely for him, each one made lustrous and sensual by the memories of all we’d shared, and would share again soon. The days passed in an agony of slowness only made bearable by the excruciating thrill of anticipation and longing. If we saw each other at a distance we looked the other way; if we were close we smiled as we had before our worlds had combined, and passed on by.
In his class I watched my friends flirt with him in their usual way, and when they danced to ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ and ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’, I did too, joining in the laughter as we’d decided I should, and hardly looking his way. It wasn’t until we were alone together for our private lesson and he taught me to play Mozart’s Night Music with my right hand that he was able to tell me how he couldn’t stop thinking about me. As he spoke and I played his hand moved around my waist causing me to make mistakes and he corrected me as he might any other student. We changed the exercise to my left hand and I was able to touch him discreetly in a way I knew he liked. Before the lesson was over we went to the store cupboard and though it was over quickly it was beautiful and necessary for we were unable to wait any longer.
The next weekend, just like the last, I told my parents I was going to Mandy’s and Sir met me at Waterloo. The drive was too long, but eventually, when we walked into his uncle’s house I made him wait while I put on the record I’d brought with me. Tricia Hill had played it during his appreciation class, now I was playing it for him, and as he realized what it was his eyes lit up with laughter.
‘Then He Kissed Me’.
It rained that weekend, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t cold and we enjoyed being naked in the downpours as much as we did in the sun. He’d brought food and wine and cigarettes, most of them hand-rolled with pot as the main ingredient. When we weren’t making love, sleeping or eating we listened to his uncle’s jazz records and talked about so many things, music of course – he even taught me how to play ‘She Loves Me’ that weekend – about our favourite books (his was The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, mine was Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak). His favourite film used to be the 1955 version of Bel Ami but now it was And God Created Woman, he said, because I remind him of Brigitte Bardot. I tell him my favourite is the same as his and because we haven’t made love for a while we stop talking and do so.
After, over cheese on toast and red wine, we smoke more pot and discuss the incredible plans for a moon landing. This moves on to the places we long to visit, together – his first choice is New Orleans and mine is Paris. He says he’ll take me after school has broken up for the summer – and I can tell he means it.
Keeping our secret was easier than you might think; either we were good at hiding our feelings while others were around, or everyone was too wrapped up in their own lives to worry much about ours. My parents were sad that I wasn’t going home as often – of course I went sometimes, I had to – but they were busy and liberal-minded and most of all trusting. My mother guessed I’d fallen for someone, she could see it in my eyes, she said, and in the way my skin glowed. When she asked if I was being careful I said I was, and it was true, we were. She didn’t insist on meeting him, or on hearing anything about him until I was ready to tell. That would have to wait until I was sixteen, naturally, but the weeks and months were passing and though sometimes it felt as though October would never come, like Sir I treasured the private time we had at his uncle’s place when it felt as though we were the only people in the world.
We didn’t always go to the