Staring at the Sun by Julian Barnes Page A

postponed. She could sense Michael getting crosser. She had heard, somewhere, that men needed physical release more than women. What happened if they were denied it? Did they blow up, like a car radiator? On the fifth evening, they talked less over dinner. Michael ordered a brandy. Suddenly, Jean whispered, “Come up in twenty minutes.”
    She collected the box and went to the bathroom along the passage. She lay on the floor with her heels on the edge of the bath and tried to insert her cap. Something was wrong with her muscles. She wondered, briefly, if she should turn out the light and think of Prosser in his black Hurricane with a red glow on his face and hands; perhaps that would relax her. But she knew it was wrong. Instead, she tried squatting; but after some initial success the cap shot out of her and messed the bathmat. She tried again with her legs up; now it was beginning to hurt. She washed the black rubber monster, dried and powdered it, then put it back in its tin.
    She lay in bed and listened to the rumble of voices in the bar below. Michael seemed to be taking a long time. Perhaps he was having another brandy. Perhaps he had run off with someone who wasn’t defective.
    He didn’t bother with the bathroom, just stood in the dark discarding his clothes; she tried to guess from the noises which items were being unbuttoned and pulled off. She heard a drawer squeak and imagined him putting on his pyjamas. There was a whoop of conversation from the bar below. He climbed into bed, kissed her on the cheek, rolled on top of her, pulled up her flannelette nightdress and tugged at the pyjama cord he’d only just tied. Sex-hyphen , she suddenly remembered.
    The lubricating jelly had given her a surrogate wetness, which seemed to flatter him. After some hunting around, he pushed into her with less difficulty than either of them had imagined. Even so, it hurt. She lay there, waiting for him to say something. When, instead, he began to move up and down inside her, she murmured, very politely, “I’m afraid I couldn’t get my thing in, darling.”
    “Oh,” he said, in a curious, neutral voice, a voice from his job. “Oh.” He didn’t sound cross or disappointed, as she had expected him to. Instead, he began pushing harder into her, and just as she was starting to panic at the assault, he gave a high nasal wheeze, pulled out and ejaculated on her stomach. It was all very unexpected. It was like someone being sick over you, she thought.
    When he half rolled away, she said, “I’m soaked. You’ve soaked me.”
    “It always feels as if there’s more than there really is,” he replied. “It’s like blood.”
    They were both silent at that sentence, at its implications as well as its mention of blood. He was panting slightly. She could smell brandy. She lay there with the bar talk rumbling on below as if nothing at all had happened anywhere in the world; she lay there in the dark, thinking about blood. Black and red, black and red—the colours of Prosser’s universe. Perhaps they were the only colours in the world when you came down to it.
    “I’ll get you a handkerchief,” Michael said eventually.
    “Don’t put the light on.”
    “No.”
    Another drawer squeaked, and he passed her a handkerchief. It felt the size of a head scarf. She laid it over her stomach, put her hand on it, and rubbed gently in a circular motion. The gesture children use to indicate hunger. Except that someone had just been sick over her. She screwed the handkerchief into a ball, threw it out of bed, pulled down her nightdress and rolled over on her side.
    The next morning she kept her eyes closed when she heard Michael wake. He came back whistling from the bathroom, dressed, gave her a shake, slapped her chummily on the hip and murmured, “See you down there, darling.”
    Perhaps it was all right. She dressed quickly and hurried down. Yes, it did seem to be all right, or so she judged from the way he kept passing her too much toast