The Terrible Privacy Of Maxwell Sim

18

And so the only remaining obstacle had been removed at last.

There was a beautiful logic, I suppose, to what happened next, as if we had both always known that it would happen one day; as if it were predetermined. Even so, I’m surprised to find that I can’t remember it in any detail. You always expect the defining, most precious experiences in your life to be stamped indelibly on the memory; and yet for some reason, these often seem to be the first ones to fade and blur. So I’m afraid that I couldn’t tell you much about the next few hours, even if I wanted to. I forget, for instance, the look that Alison gave me just before putting down her glass and kissing me on the mouth for the first time. (Yes, it was left to her to make that move, in the end.) I forget precisely how it felt when she took me by the hand and led me towards the staircase. I forget the sway of her back and the curve of her body as I followed her up the stairs. I forget how the initial coldness of the unused bedroom turned to warmth as she took me in her arms and clasped me against her. I forget how it felt, after so many long, long years, to have another human body in blissful, loving contact with mine: clothes intervening at first, but soon discarded. I forget, now, the texture of her skin, the faint, familiar smell – the smell of homecoming – when my lips touched the back of her neck, the softness of her breasts as I cupped and then kissed them tenderly. I forget the hours that followed, the slow, inevitable rhythms of our lovemaking, how we ebbed and flowed between love and sleep, love and sleep. How we finally woke up in each other’s arms, incredulous to find ourselves together, finally – together and inseparable – in the blue light of a wintry Edinburgh dawn. I forget it all. I forget it all.

As for what followed …

But listen – you know the end of this story, now. Or at least, now that it’s finished, now that Alison and I are together, and happy, now that the whole nightmare of what came before is over and done with, then the story has served its purpose. No need to carry on spilling words on to paper. If we all lived in a state of perfect happiness – no conflicts, no tensions, no neuroses, anxieties, unresolved issues, monstrous personal or political injustices, none of that rubbish – then all the people who run to stories for consolation all the time – they wouldn’t need to do that any more, would they? They wouldn’t need art at all. Which is why I don’t need it, and neither do you, from this point on: you don’t need to read about the plans Alison and I made that morning, you don’t need to hear any of the boring practical details about her separation and divorce, or how we moved into a house in Morningside together a few months later, or how long it took me to get used to having two teenage stepsons, how wary and mistrustful they were of me at first until we took them on our first holiday as a family, to Corsica, and somehow there it all got resolved, the resentment and bad feeling seemed to evaporate under the Mediterranean sun, and …

Well. As I say, you don’t need to know any of that. None of it is true, in any case.