from the novel “Bitter Honey”

Apparently, the more Helen felt things were slipping, the stronger her will to prove herself grew. Slowly but surely Jason began to disappear from her picture of the world. They began to drift apart. Their sex life started to die away like an organ with the blood supply cut off – first with occasional prickling and smarting, and later with numbness and surreptitious coldness. It threatened to turn into gangrenous tissue that would ultimately poison their relationship. Jason said that, in her eyes, sex had apparently turned into a threat that might give birth to new problems: another wean, and then another and another, wean after wean, frustrating her over and over again and moving her goals even further away. Still, she couldn’t let their relationship fall apart; that again would ruin everything. Her plans didn’t include a broken marriage; this would complicate everything so much. At least what has already been taken care of must work on: starting from scratch would take too much of her precious energy. So Helen made an effort to keep the gangrene at bay, or rather, she put their sex on ice. She was available whenever he wanted; just that sex with her became like fishing in a sludgy puddle in which all the fish have gone belly up. Helen did her best to make it all look perfect. And it did. It was just that Jason was less and less enthusiastic about it.
But he was just as funny and affable as he could be in the old days. His wide, glowing smile made up for his slightly dull appearance, and his hands were just as beautiful as they always had been. While he was eating, his movements were different, something special: for example, he held his fork like a pen. Lunches with him were fun. He even seemed to be warming to me, which I quite liked. I had a feeling that maybe now I’d get to the bottom of the old mystery I’d somehow suppressed but never solved. I had the time now; I could play differently. Also, his interest suited me. It suited me that I, still just a lassie, was interesting to somebody real, to a man with a wean, with his own flat, with a job – someone who, after all, was not a common horny bastard but a nice bloke with the most beautiful hands in Glasgow. In a way it was making me part of this real world, this other time that seemed to have overtaken me, escaped me while I wasn’t watching.
So I wasn’t really surprised when, one late summer weekend, he invited me for a trip to the Trossachs, to Loch Katrine. I must admit I thought the idea slightly weird; even after everything he had told me about his relationship with Helen, it was still a little wild. He assured me Helen didn’t mind a bit but he’d tell her (just in case) that he was going with a friend and his wife. I didn’t really think twice. It wasn’t because it was him who invited me: I was just very tired at the time. Work at the bank was becoming hell just then and I needed a break; I hadn’t been out of Glasgow for months and, as you know, I really love the Trossachs. And if I could use the trip to make some progress in my attempts to solve his mystery, so much the better. Jason offered to book two single rooms in a nice B&B. So that Saturday we left in his car.
There isn’t really much to tell about the trip itself. It was nice and, anyway, you know what the Trossachs are like in late summer when the heather is blooming and the weather is fine. We walked a lot and were pretty knackered by the evening. We had dinner in a local pub, followed by two pints of heavy each. I don’t know why, probably because I was so tired, but the pints seemed to have made me kind of dizzy. I wasn’t drunk at all. You know very well I’m not drunk after two pints. But I felt kind of funny, cheerful. When we stepped out of the pub and went home, it was still daylight, and we walked down a gravel footpath not far from the road. The footpath wound through a thin ancient forest, accompanied by a burn trickling deep in a peaty gully. We talked about books. From his chipper talk you could see that – never mind his enthusiasm about his work – he was actually sorry he hadn’t stuck to his old love, literature, taking a proper and well-paid job instead. Well, at least as far as that was concerned, I could empathise. We talked about the books both of us hadread recently. I remember he said he’d read Foreign Parts by Janice Galloway and I thought it was funny he liked such a, well, feminine book. But I liked that. We arrived at a wee bridge across the burn, not far from our B&B. The gully widened here and made a gap in the forest so that you could see the Highlands to the north. It was about ten and the sun was setting. We stopped on the bridge and leaned against the railing. The distant hills were slowly turning ashy green, becoming dull and lifeless.
I swear I’ve no idea how it happened. All of a sudden he had his arm across my shoulders and his face was touching mine. I didn’t even know what was going on but his tongue was in my mouth and I felt the taste of his saliva and his soft, slightly beery tongue. I never intended anything like that. It wasn’t part of my plan. I expected he might try something of the kind – I was prepared for it. I even hoped he’d try to come out this way, and I’d of course respond with one of my many prepared one-liners – all different, all essentially friendly but definitive rejections. But when the moment finally came, I just couldn’t resist. There was no time for it. I didn’t remember. I only felt that it was quite nice, kissing him on that bridge. It was becoming cold, and the occasional pricks on our arms and necks implied the interest of the first evening swarms of midges. It was time to go back to our B&B.
Of course he expected we’d end up in the same room – that is, in the same bed. I said no. Enough was enough. It was a trip. I came here for a little break from Glasgow, not for suspicious adventures of a sexual nature. I was still slightly dizzy from what’d just happened, but I was soon in control again. More than that, I felt I could now lead him round by the nose. It was perfectly clear that he thought he’d won, got his foot in the door; if nothing else, the first step was successful, and everything else would come naturally. I, on the other hand, couldn’t quite come to terms with my own feelings, I was still so surprised at my reaction. Anyway, I knew I was the one holding all the cards. I could turn him this way and that at will. I had what he wanted, and if he by any chance thought he had successfully used me, so much the better. If anybody used anybody here, I’d make use of him. In my own time.
After we returned from Loch Katrine I didn’t see him for a while. He could have been making some plans in the meantime, but I didn’t care. I felt light as never before. I wrote you a long e-mail, full of loving words. I really loved you. I had so much to tell you. Not everything yet though. But I knew there’d be a time for that, too. First I had to give you so many other things I had discovered in me. The whole affair with Jason was completely irrelevant. I kept it in a kind of parallel universe and it had nothing to do with you; perhaps only as much as it made me feel more alive, and this made both of us more alive.