Marine Ices by Tony Garnett

Author:Tony Garnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publish on Demand Global LLC

Chapter 11

They lay in bed, tired but not yet sleepy. There would be no sex tonight. She wanted to talk. That was fine. There was no pressure. He guessed her sexual experience was small, but she was curious and approached it like anything else that interested her. It did not inhibit her. She asked questions. She suggested they try stuff. She told him what she liked. Gradually this openness and appetite for experiment excited him and loosened him up. Whether they had sex or not on a particular night was not a source of anxiety. They did, or they did not. She was relaxed about it. That relaxed him.

He had never been able to lose himself in sex, except sometimes when he came, and then only for a few seconds. It provoked anxiety, guilt, and fear of rejection. He knew it was his fault. Other men were relaxed and passionate and knew which buttons to press, or so he assumed. They certainly talked a confident game. He also assumed the woman would end up disappointed even before they got into the whole dirty business. All this sexual liberation was fine, but he was still a boy in the respectable and repressed fifties, and if you felt you had to do it, you had better pretend you were really somewhere else.

“Not me, sir, I was doing my homework, sir.”

His assumption was that women do not really like it, and they just allow it because men cannot help themselves. It was no surprise, then, that his sexual experience was not extensive. You could count them on one hand, easily. In fact, most of it had been in conjunction with one hand. No wonder that he could only worship Marje, open mouthed and paralysed, like a fan meeting a star. She had been so sexy, so open, and easy with her body, he had felt guilty just staring at her. But that was all he could do. Back home his parents would have said, “No better than she ought to be,” of a girl like Marje. Yet she seemed innocent, pure even. Maybe it was different in America, as they said it was different in Sweden.

That was the truth of his experience, but in telling Havana, he lightened it up, making a joke of it all. Anyway, she was interested in her own origins. She wanted to know she was the result of true love. She wanted to be told of a perfect, storybook romance.

“They were potty about each other. Two such different people. Go figure, as you Yanks say.”

There was a long silence. She noted that what he had said meshed with Marje’s version, but it was good to hear it confirmed by Barry.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing. I mean, I did have feelings for her, but I buried it all. Kept up appearances. But I was hurt. He’d won the pretty maiden. Eventually I met Helen.”

“Tell me about that.”

“You can’t be interested. It’s not anything to do with Tom.”

“I know. I’m interested. Tell me everything.

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