Read Online Refuge by Andrew Brown - Free Book Online Page B

other while she stared ahead. Her fixed air of determination reminded him of Amanda. The driver was considerably prettier than his wife though, he thought sadly.
    Beautiful women, in his experience, started out as inherently desirable and then slowly hardened over time, losing their mystique as they became critical towards their lovers. As their warmth faded, so their looks seemed to be sucked inwardly into a dry interior, becoming increasingly emaciated and hollow. Richard was drawn to unfamiliar women in a way that was quite different from his appreciation of men. He found women’s obvious foibles and even their aesthetic oddities endearing in the beginning, while he had none of the same patience for men. He was wary of men, he supposed, aware of the unspoken jealousies and insecurities that gnawed at them and followed them around like dirty shadows. Yet his lasting friendships were all with men. He had become close to some of Amanda’s friends, had enjoyed a risqué warmth with some of his colleagues’ wives and had charmed his female clients. But the allure tarnished and he would soon distance himself, holding their neediness at bay, watching their pained eyes cool and turn to acrimony.
    Richard was, he felt, a person who would always be at risk of having an affair; it would be momentary, he imagined, a sudden attraction that was passionately fulfilled and then spent, lasting no longer than a week or two. He expected an overwhelming and irresistible infatuation with a mysterious woman who demanded his full attention, who feasted on him ravenously and then broke away, satiated. Yet, to his surprise and sometimes regret, he had been faithful to Amanda throughout their marriage, save for a single encounter. His only lapse had been unmemorable and utterly without mystery. She was a temporary typist whom Selwyn had employed while his own secretary had been on honeymoon. She had bounced into the office like a golden retriever, floppy and untoned beneath a mass of hair, bangles and large dangling earrings. Richard had been in the middle of a tense fraud trial and had hardly noticed her until the office party a few weeks after her arrival. She had drunk too much and had danced loosely with all the men in the office before focusing her moody eyes on Richard towards the very end of the evening. He had downed the better part of half a bottle of ordinary whisky; when she had gripped his wrist with moist fingers and murmured something suggestive into his ear, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time. The sex had been frantic and was over in less than a minute. He had pushed her onto the table in one of the consultation rooms and hauled himself drunkenly on top of her. It had been like diving onto bags of warm milk. Her alcoholic breath had been hot and unpleasant in his face as he pulled down her panties and wriggled out of his trousers. Her damp thighs were greasy as he plunged away, groaning woozily and coming within a few seconds. A week later she had left the firm, without either one of them having mentioned the evening again. The encounter had been so bereft of emotional warmth that he had not felt guilty; it seemed no more significant than if he had masturbated before leaving for home.
    Sometimes he wondered whether his loyalty to Amanda was due not so much to his moral probity but to his fear of rejection. Or the anxiety that his virility would be found wanting. The terror of impotence lurked in his mind. Like any other man, he suffered from bouts of wretched performance, fatigue and stress sapping him of his will and focus. But each isolated incident felt like a carnal ambush, a deliberate erosion of his confidence in his libido, no matter how irregular or how otherwise robust his accomplishments in bed. Even his fantasies were plagued by unbidden thoughts of failure, images of taunts and retributive sulkiness. The narrative of his fictional liaisons, risking his marriage and reputation only to be incapable of