House Rules

Sometimes you shouldn't go back. I did.
People say that your schooldays are the best days of your life; this
manifestly isn't true. Far better for me were those heady days at
University; better still were the first two years of my working life
which I spent in a shared house in Manchester. There were five of us in
the house in Didsbury; Damien, Ros, Sally, Suzanne and myself. We were
all young, we all had money and life was, for the most part, very
sweet. Living in a mixed house also had quite a lot to recommend it;
from the girls' point of view, Damien and myself were handy
spider-shifters and heavy-furniture-movers, and it gave them a sense of
security when dealing with unexpected callers. Our benefits were a bit
less tangible - after all, these weren't the sort of girls you could
prevail upon to do a spot of your ironing. I suppose we were
discovering the kind of things which my father's generation only found
out after months of marriage; the unrestrained slovenliness of women
who aren't out to impress, the hangover- and PMT-induced snappiness,
the intimate secrets of female beauty strewn across the bathroom?
Needless to say, we had to have House Rules to cope with this
previously undiscovered country. These rules were restated and, if
necessary, amended with each change of tenant. They covered the obvious
regarding bills and taking out the rubbish and so on, plus principles
which had evolved with the passage of time. One rather radical rule was
that the bathroom door should never be locked; this wasn't from a
spirit of voyeurism but merely acknowledged the fact that the bathroom
was intensely busy during certain periods and if you chose to take a
shower at such times then you had to let other residents in to shave or
fix their make-up. A compensating rule was that, given the
inevitability of seeing the other residents in a state of undress from
time to time, you don't stare. Personal relationships were also
sacrosanct; for example, when Suzanne split up from her long-standing
boyfriend she had three one-night stands in the same week and none of
us could say a word until she got it out of her system. Ros had somehow
become the adjudicator on many of these issues, perhaps by virtue of
her long-standing residency, or because she was a teacher, and she
often took it upon herself to have a Quiet Word, such as when Sally,
who was the giddiest and most insecure of the three girls, paraded
before us in her new bikini one day to ascertain whether or not it
fitted well, or when Damien failed to mop up beer he had spilt in the
sitting room.
Although I was (relatively) quiet and abstemious, I fell foul of the
House Rules one Saturday morning when I was partaking of an early
breakfast and reading the newspaper. Ros was the first of the others to
get up and came down to the kitchen in her undies to collect a blouse
which was hanging on the drying frame. I lowered my newspaper and
watched her; believe me, she was worth watching. She turned a
disapproving glance my way.
"You're staring, aren't you?" she accused. I could hardly deny
it.
"Time for a Quiet Word?" I asked rather cheesily.
"Sort of", she replied, "take off your shirt. And your trousers."
Without questioning I did so and stood before her in my boxer shorts.
She slowly looked me up and down, her eyes lingering for a couple of
seconds on my groin. I realised I was beginning to get aroused and
began to turn red.
"Mmm? not too bad" she conceded, collected her blouse and flounced off
upstairs.

After two years the accountancy firm I worked for arranged for me to
transfer to their Bristol office; graduates were expected to be
flexible in their domestic arrangements so I went, not without a few
pangs of regret. However, six months later I happened to be spending a
day in Manchester revisiting an old client so I rang the house to see
if anyone wanted to renew acquaintance. Damien answered the phone and
informed me that he, Sally and the new guy Dave had booked a theatre
visit, but would bring a few bottles back to the house if I would be
around afterwards; Suzanne had regained her old boyfriend and had moved
into his flat in Hulme, and her replacement, a girl named Ruth, was
visiting her parents. Damien called Ros to the phone to see whether she
could entertain me until the theatrical threesome got back in.
"Sure, John" she replied, "I've got some marking to do but come along
around eight and we'll have a takeaway and a natter." I offered to
stand the takeaway as I was on expenses; Ros promised to get some wine
in.
Even in two years Didsbury had changed considerably; new eateries and
wine bars were everywhere and there was an almost continental feel
about the place, except for the constant drizzle which anchored the
area firmly in Manchester. Ros hadn't changed though; she still gleamed
with health in the way that only young black women can, and her wide
mouth opened in a huge grin of pleasure as she answered the door. Or
maybe she had changed; she threw her arms around me and gave me a
passionate kiss such as I'd never received as a flatmate.
We set about the takeaway and the wine; I suppose that neither of us
was a big drinker, and the wine soon loosened our inhibitions. It began
with catching up on our current lives, then turned to reminiscing about
our days together in the house and the foibles of the other tenants,
particularly Damien and Sally. I think it was Ros who first crossed the
boundaries of propriety by revealing that Sally had always had a silly
sexual fantasy regarding John Wayne, to which I responded by sharing
Damien's sordid desires which revolved around Scandinavian lap dancers.
We knew we were both breaking House Rules big time, but we reasoned
that as I was no longer a tenant they no longer applied. Things began
to get a bit wild after that; without warning, Ros stripped to her
underwear and began gyrating suggestively around a sweeping brush, all
the time extolling the beauty of the fjords and the great value
bargains to be had at Ikea. I recall slapping my thighs and shouting
"Yee-hah!" quite a lot and exhorting Ros to saddle up her reindeer and
catch the varmints who'd held up the smorgasbord.
It wasn't long before we were in Ros's bed, making love noisily and
greedily.
We were still in each other's arms wondering what to do next when we
heard the street door open and Damien lurch in noisily, followed by the
others.
"I see that stuck-up prat John never showed," he slurringly
observed.
Any thought of presenting myself to the assembled throng rapidly
disappeared; instead, Ros and I huddled under the duvet and giggled
softly. This time we made love slowly and daintily, touching each other
lightly with tongue and fingertip as the rest of the household finished
off the beer.

We woke at around six o'clock and crept out of the house; Ros drove me
back to my hotel so I could be breakfasted and smart-suited well in
time to meet my client. We sat and held hands in the car park for a
long time, each unwilling to be the first to make the fateful move.
Finally I spoke:
"They were good times, weren't they?" I ventured.
Ros thought for a few seconds then replied:
"The best of times, John. The very best."
I kissed her for the last time, thanked her for the lift and waved
goodbye as she drove out of the gateway.

I am writing this on the train back to Bristol; it's a three-to-four
hour journey and I've lots of time to think things through. I don't
think I'll be seeing Ros again. "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" as my
old mate Proust would have said. Must read that sometimes, and maybe
revisit my Leonard Cohen albums whilst I'm in a melancholy mood. I
reckon that Ros and I never put our brief relationship into the future,
we just drank the last of a great vintage wine, ate the last beachside
barbecue before shuttering against the autumn storms. Maybe we both
preferred to cherish the sweet sharp pain of loss rather than risk the
long dull ache of disillusionment. Maybe we broke the unwritten House
Rule, the one that says No Going Back.