The Queen's Margarine by Wendy Perriam Page A

exhaustion but because they were desperate to make love. Instinctively, she knew it would be special (passionate and fierce, as if they were running on adrenaline), and that he’d use his range of poetic skills – imagination, inspiration, creative ingenuity – to try out wild positions and do astounding things. Rodney had a dodgy back and had to move with caution, for fear of further damage. And he’d become nervous, of late, about getting an erection, so the whole bedroom thing was increasingly fraught. How could she relax, when he was either wincing in pain, or casting anxious glances at his equipment, as if he feared it might let him down – again?
    Having slouched back to the sink, she took out her annoyance on a grease-encrusted pan, only to be interrupted by Daniel, who came to find her in the kitchen, maths book in his hand.
    â€˜Mum, I need some help. I just don’t get this algebra.’
    â€˜OK,’ she said, rinsing the last few plates. ‘Sit there at the table and I’ll be with you in a tick.’
    No problem with maths. She was in remarkably good practice now, from constantly adding up the minutes since she had last laid eyes on Fergus, and – far more enthralling – totting up the countless times he would ravish her and ravish her among those rapturous tulips.
    Â 
    Claire switched off Gone With The Wind . She had no desire to watch a rampant Rhett Butler making love to Scarlett O’Hara,when everything inside her was screaming to join in. Yet the silence seemed oppressive once the screen had gone dead and there were no more gasps of passion. Mooching into the hall, she removed Susanna’s scarf from the banisters and idly straightened a picture. Without her usual chores – cooking supper, washing-up, helping out with homework, chauffeuring Daniel back and forth to football training or five-a-side or swimming club – a surge of unused energy was throbbing through her body, with no outlet, no fulfilment. It was rare for all the family to be out on the same evening, but Rodney had gone to Rotary, Daniel was staying over with a school-friend, and Susanna was at a play rehearsal. She ought to use the time to catch up with the ironing, or make a cake for Drugscope’s Easter fête, yet her thoughts were very far removed from any aspect of good works. She was preoccupied by one thing only: the fact that Fergus hadn’t made any further move. Could she really blame him, though? By totally ignoring his note, turning down his challenge, she must have hurt his pride. Poets were highly sensitive, so, for all she knew, he could feel deeply wounded.
    It had even struck her yesterday that he might have actually stolen the tulips and was now banged up in gaol. How else could he have acquired them, when he was struggling to make ends meet? Yet stealing them made no more sense than buying them. As far as she could ascertain, this particular variety, with its colour, markings and petal-shape, simply didn’t exist. Which only increased her obsession. Weren’t inexplicable dream-flowers peculiarly precious? And wasn’t it vital to see him again, if only to discover where he’d found them?
    In fact, she went to sit at the dining-table, just to gaze at them again, as she’d been doing the whole week. Their colour had deepened to a blatant, blowsy orange, as if they’d come on heat and were smouldering with desire. Yet they also looked unkempt and almost slatternly, flinging themselves all over the place, clearly frantic to escape the vase and break loose in rebellion. Even when delivered, they had been free of any ties or wrappings; anarchic from the start. The last bouquet she’d received (from her mother on her birthday) had been double-wrapped, first in shrouding cellophane, then in stiff, confining paper; the stalks fastened withtight rubber-bands, as well as restrictive string. It had taken her a good ten minutes to remove their