Afterwards, as we are lying entangled under the duvet in the little blue bedroom, Ruth asks, "So, did you...enjoy yourself?" I turn my head to look at her incredulously, and she smiles, saying, "I thought so. It's just that it can be a bit difficult to tell…you can be so, so polite…" My heart begins to race in fearful anticipation of what she is going to say next, and once again I hear Sarah's cold, contemptuous voice ticking off a list of my inadequacies and inabilities. I roll onto my side to look at Ruth, trying to read her face, but it is as kind as usual. In a puzzled voice, she says, "It's as if you're somehow not quite here, in the moment…" I try to think of the correct answer to this observation, but fail. It's true that I'm not as physically fluent as she is, but I had attributed this to my own inexperience. Her next question shocks me. "Malcolm, do you actually like sex?" I blush furiously, tongue-tied, and she chuckles low in her throat. "It's just that if we're going to be together, (oh, how my heart flutters wildly at these words) don't you think it should be enjoyable for us both?" I cannot imagine where she is going with this, but at least she is still talking about "we" and "us", so I relax slightly and ask her what she has in mind. "You, talking to me about how you feel about it, would be a good start," Ruth prompts, and when I open my mouth to protest, she lunges across the small distance between us and kisses me until I capitulate.
Flopping back on the pillows, with Ruth propped on her elbows next to me, face cupped in her hands, watching me with eyes like a serene blue sea, I gather my thoughts, and hesitantly begin. "Erm, well…my father was the local vicar, so you can imagine what that did for my image in the village…not that it wasn't already bad enough, being the school geek…the only time they ever liked me, I think, was after I bugged the staffroom to eavesdrop on the teachers, then played the recording during assembly…not a very bright move, in retrospect, but the whole school treated me like a king for about a week, then it was forgotten in the wake of the next rugby match, or football game…" Ruth's eyes sparkle with amusement and she nods encouragingly. "What I'm trying to say is, I wasn't exactly popular, and as for girls…I couldn't even look at them without blushing. And nothing much changed, right through university, until I met Sarah, and once she saw that I was bound for an unglamorous career in the civil service, and that I had Mum to consider as well, that was it for us." No need, I think, to tell Ruth of Sarah's hurtful betrayal. "When I joined Five and realised that part of my job was to monitor and record people in the most intimate, compromising situations, I had a very hard time coming to terms with it. I suppose I wasn't very worldly to begin with, and I found it very difficult to be subjected to such…scenes. And some of the things I saw were horrible, Ruth, the depravity and degradation that some…people…are capable of would turn your stomach. I didn't find any of it in the least titillating or interesting – other people's pleasures are so boring, aren't they?"
Ruth nods in silent agreement, perhaps unwilling to break into my thoughts. "I had to find a way to deal with that, so I learned to wall off my real self when I was doing surveillance, to concentrate on the technical and operational aspects, and to treat the subjects as if they were no more real than actors in a Soho movie-house. I developed detachment, found a way to retreat into my mind, and over the years I became very good at living in my head. As for…sex, itself…the only time my father ever talked to me about it, he told me that it's something which should only be shared with one's spouse, which was hardly a surprise coming from an Anglican vicar…but he also said that when it's good, it's like a dance where two people take turns to lead and be led, moving together in perfect harmony to music only they can hear... I never understood what he meant, by that second part, until now." Ruth's eyes brighten even more and she reaches one hand out to take mine, interweaving our fingers and bringing the back of my hand to her lips, brushing a kiss onto it that makes me quiver in delight, before giving her analysis.
"So, what I'm hearing is that you were a shy, but brilliant boy, who became a shy, but brilliant man, forced to witness things that many other men would pay to see, but which repulsed you to the point of nausea, and caused you to retreat inside your head, cutting off a whole world of physical realities. And your father was the local clergyman, to boot. You poor thing, no wonder you're not comfortable in your own skin." I frown, about to disagree, but then realise the truth behind her words as I think of someone who is totally content in his battle-scarred hide. I am nothing like Harry, and even less so in this regard. He has the quietly confident air of a man who is at peace with every inch of his body, flaws, scars, and all, whereas I am only truly comfortable when fully clothed, preferably in a three piece suit. And from his former, formidable reputation as the Casanova of the Service, I can only assume that he is equally at home with his sexual prowess…lucky bugger, I think in a green-eyed moment – and then I see the woman who is here beside me, listening to me, and my jealousy disperses like smoke on the wind.
Once more, Ruth's wisdom and insight cuts straight to the heart of the matter, and I can only nod in response, struggling to find the right words. She continues thoughtfully, "And yet, you blush when I look at you, like this, and shiver if I touch you…like this," I gasp at her sudden movement beneath the duvet…"do you know, I think there's a very sensual man just waiting to be let out…" My breathing becomes short and rapid again as she continues, and then she removes her hand and sitting up, strips the duvet off us both. I am still not used to the sight of her, nude – every time is like the first, and although I can't help feeling that a thunderbolt from heaven could strike at any moment, I can't get enough of seeing her creamy-skinned, lightly freckled body next to mine. I especially love the freckles, like exotic markings…beautiful!
For a shy and modest person, Ruth is surprisingly easy about nudity when we are in the bedroom, and I put it down to the difference in our ages. Sarah had flatly refused to remove all her clothes, on the handful of occasions (three) that we had been together, and her response to my tentative efforts at seduction had been to stay perfectly still and gaze in boredom at the ceiling. She may as well have been reading Lie back and think of England, writ large in Victorian script across the architrave. When she had finally told me she was leaving me for the flash City suit she had been conducting an affair with, there had been an air of barely suppressed excitement about her, and a look in her eyes as if she had been vouchsafed some miraculous revelation…now, I know the meaning of that look, for I have seen it in Ruth's eyes, just after we finish, and her body goes limp in my arms, sated and replete…that I should be capable of eliciting such a response from her is a source of tremulous wonder and humble delight. I can barely remember the aching loneliness of the decades of my life before her. Before Ruth...
My generation bore the brunt of the AIDS crisis, and the free and easy Seventies had become the prudish and uptight Eighties, when everyone knew someone affected by this hideous disease (which was not, incidentally, something the CIA or KGB cooked up to eliminate certain elements of society, as some of the loonier conspiracy theorists would have it) and total abstinence, or practicing safe sex, were suddenly the only options for those wishing to avoid infection. My own response was dictated both by fear of infection and of further feminine rejection, and the morals instilled in me by my parents; and so, I abstained, retreating further and further into a clean, safe world of computers and electronics, of coding and algorithms, until I had become a man that others didn't even overlook, because they never saw me in the first place. And that suited me well; it allowed me to come and go unseen as I bugged rooms, ran fibre-optic surveillance devices through walls, or emerged from the back of the observation van.
By the time Ruth's cohort was going to University in the 1990's, the fearful spectre of AIDS had receded somewhat, and the pendulum of sexual permissiveness was beginning to swing the other way again. And as for now – I can hardly bring myself to look at what goes on now, in some of the rooms we have bugged recently. It's like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, or a banned film. I was positively relieved when Colin was recruited, and some of the more junior field staff began to volunteer for observation shifts, but often Harry insists on the senior technical officer on more important operations, and that's me, whether I like it or not.
Ruth's warm breath on my skin jolts me out of my musings and back into the here and now, as she invites me to roll over onto my front. I comply, stretching full length as she wraps a sheet around herself, sarong-style, for warmth in the cool room, and then kneels next to me. Turning my head to look, one-eyed, over my shoulder, I see Ruth rubbing something together in her palms, and in reply to my questioning glance, she says, "Sweet almond oil – I use it when my skin feels dry," and then she glides her palms up from the base of my spine to my shoulders, and I cease to think at all as Ruth's skilled fingers find every knot of tension, every sore place, every tight muscle, eliminating them one by one as I melt beneath her touch. Methodically, she works over my back and shoulders, awakening nerve endings I never knew I had, as I lie there in a state of utter bliss, deeply moved by the attention she is lavishing on me.
At one point, I hear Ruth make a thoughtful noise in her throat, so I make an enquiring noise of my own. She is working on my shoulders, putting more pressure through the tight trapezius muscles (too many hours on the Grid, hunched over a keyboard), as she says, "Oh, I was just thinking that you have skin like a peach, it's so fine – most men seem to have something more like leather, it's not responsive at all to anything subtle. With you, I can just draw my fingers across it like this – and see the tiny hairs rise, and then it flushes…quite amazing!" I remind myself to keep breathing slowly and steadily as warmth rushes through my body. Ruth moves further down, and I feel the bed move as she shifts position and straddles me, almost sitting on my backside as she concentrates on my lumbar region. She discovers that I am ticklish around my middle and sides, that I will groan with pleasure if she applies the right sort of pressure just there, and that I adore it when she runs her hands up and out slowly from the small of my back. "So, what were you saying about dancing, earlier?" she queries, as she turns around one hundred and eighty degrees, and begins to work on my pitifully short hamstrings (too much sitting, not enough stretching). "Can you dance?" she goes on, as she uses her thumbs to work deeper into the tissue. I flinch before trying to relax into the pressure, and she eases up slightly. "Actually, yes," I reply, "Grandmamma taught me, when I was about fifteen. She was a proper old martinet, was my father's mother, and she was quite determined that her awkward, gawky grandson should have at least some social graces. So she taught me to dance by treading on my toes until I learnt how to waltz, foxtrot, and do a passable, if rather ungainly, quickstep." Ruth is laughing silently; I can feel her shaking as she slides her hands down to my calf muscles, and I chuckle myself. "Grandmamma weighed about 15 stone, so I fairly soon became adept at getting out of her way – and it turned out, for someone who didn't play sport, I was actually quite coordinated. I haven't done it in decades though – well, people don't, nowadays, do they?"
Ruth sits up for a moment, and I can feel her soft bottom, swathed in the sheet, resting against mine. I close my eyes and will the blood now rushing downwards to divert itself elsewhere, with scant success. "They still do if they go to a formal ball," she volunteers, and there is something in the quality of her tone which makes me wonder where this line of thought is coming from. I don't have to wonder very long; her next statement is "Like the Security Services ball next month, for example…" I twist around to look at her, and am rewarded with the sight of her sheet-clad bottom hovering in the air as she leans far forward to reach the lower aspects of my calves. "Ruth, are you inviting me to go with you?" I put the question to her, and she turns from her work to reply, grinning, "I thought you'd never ask!" And just like that, apparently, we are going to the Security Services ball. Together. I hate to do it, but I have to ask. "Um, I'd love to take you, but aren't you worried that…people…will see us?"
Ruth laughs, and says, "Giles and Susan, remember?" My heart sinks – does she mean for us to go as platonic friends, not as a couple? – and then she adds, "Besides, I don't think anyone else from work will go. Harry won't, he's been griping about the idea of it for weeks – he told me he'd rather spend the night playing drinking games with an active IRA cell – and Danny doesn't want to go now Zoe's left, so he's put in to do the night relief shifts that weekend. Adam and Fiona might go, but they'll be too wrapped up in each other to notice us if they do, and Sam's already got plans to visit her family in Edinburgh – it's her mother's birthday, I think she said – so I don't see the harm, do you?" Oh, yes, I think, I most certainly do, but how can I say no to her? At the back of my mind, a tiny alarm begins to sound, but for once in my overly cautious life, I choose to ignore it. I'll think about that later…
Instead, I catch the end of the sheet which is tucked under Ruth's arms, and with a deft twitch I pull her down to lie next to me, telling her, "It's your turn now". And so it is, until she is glowing from my ministrations, and arching her body towards me in anticipation. Grandmamma needn't have trodden on my toes – it seems I'm a fast learner when it comes to physical matters, after all. This time, Ruth climaxes before me, and I feel like one of the ancient Greek gods. Not Apollo, driving the sun chariot across the sky, or Zeus, the supreme Olympian, but more like Hephaestus, the god of all things technical, father of metalcraft and weaponry, yet peace-loving and gentle…the god married to Aphrodite…the god, I try to forget, that was cuckolded by Ares. Powerful, masculine Ares, the god of war…and then the world around me dissolves into pure physical sensation, sight, movement, and sound blurring together, as I surrender to Ruth at last.