They scrambled up to a rocky ledge, sheltered by a tree whose branches thrust out from the ground below, offering a handhold as they climbed.
‘Happy?’ asked Stephen, when they had both made it. He took off his jacket and spread it on the ground, and at that moment the reality of their being alone together, being out on the fell at night, struck Cressida with a giddying mix of pleasure and agitation. There must be a line of Wordsworth, she thought – but for once poetry was out of reach. Stephen set the whisky bottle down, and Cressida handed him the glasses she’d brought from the house. She couldn’t let herself speak yet.
‘Cheers,’ Stephen said, as he poured them each a shot. ‘You’re very quiet.’
‘Just . . .’ began Cressida. She shook her head and smiled, then took a sip of whisky. ‘It’s lovely up here, isn’t it? I mean – having it all to ourselves.’ A little pitch of daring; another sip of whisky.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Stephen agreed. ‘This is a nice thing to do. I’m glad you came and found me.’
‘I am too,’ Cressida said. ‘Not that . . . It wasn’t exactly chance that I picked you.’
She risked a glance at his face then, but he was staring out across the valley. There were barely any lights visible, just the glint of starlight in the beck, and the altered shapes of the fells. She edged a little closer to him, and – primed by the whisky – leant her head on his shoulder.
‘Cold?’ he asked.
‘A bit.’
‘Here.’ He lifted his arm and put it around her shoulder, and Cressida shut her eyes, feeling the pressure of his fingers through her sleeve, the slight movement of his chest as he breathed. She could smell the waterfall, its astringent, peppery sweetness rising from the cave as the stream plummeted down, down towards it. Oh, the agony of wanting to prolong this moment, but also to move on from it – the terrible difficulty of knowing whether, when, how. She didn’t dare to move, to say anything, but how could she tell what he was thinking, whether he was waiting for a sign? How could she know whether she risked gambling away this state of anguished contentment?
And so they sat, drinking their whisky, gazing out at the shadowy landscape. As the silence drew out, Cressida was more and more certain of its significance. Surely Stephen, too, felt the pressure of it building up, the terrible urge and reluctance to defuse it? And if he didn’t, was that because he was oblivious, or because he too was weighing the seconds, the minutes, and wondering what they meant?
At last she could bear it no longer.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked – hoping, hoping to ease her way into his uncertainty and discomfiture; to make him tell her how things might be even better. But his reply thwarted that hope.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘What about you? Ready to go back?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. But the magic had gone now. It felt, suddenly, a little foolish to be sitting out here in the middle of the night, drinking Fay’s whisky. As if they were stand-ins, she thought, taking the place of the real actors on a film set whose romantic setting she could see now was contrived and clichéd: the moonlit night, the plash of the stream, the brooding fells. For another minute she sat, and then she drew her feet towards her and stood up.
‘That was really nice,’ Stephen said, his voice gentler than usual, as though he could sense her disappointment.
‘Yes.’ Cressida shivered a little, and busied herself brushing strands of moss off her legs. It was better to know, she told herself. Better to have had this half-hour than not. But she couldn’t deceive herself that easily.
It seemed to take longer to get back to the house, even though they were heading downhill now. Cressida kept her eyes down, watching her footing, anxious that Stephen shouldn’t have to help her again, and as if sensing this, he stayed a little further behind this time. When they reached the gate at the bottom of the hill, she was almost relieved that the adventure was over. Stephen walked beside her up the drive, and there was a moment of shared sensibility, a glimmer of humour, as they trod gently over the gravel to avoid being heard.
The kitchen felt warm and close, still filled with the smell of last night’s supper. Stephen shut the door behind them, and then he stopped, just inside the room. A second passed, then two, then three. Cressida could feel hope building up again, and she couldn’t bear it.
‘Well, goodnight,’ she said. ‘Thank you for coming with me.’
‘Cressida,’ he said – and then his hands were on her face, and before she had time to think he was kissing her, and she felt everything melt and fuse inside her, delight and disbelief and a great surge of desire.
*
They went to his room, since hers was directly below Fay’s – the murmured exchange a further source of exaltation to Cressida, confirming their intentions, their consciousness of what was happening. She could taste his mouth still, whisky and salt, as they shut the door, and then they were kissing again – oh, the extraordinary joy of it, after all this time – and she was nudging him backwards towards the bed, her hands lifting the back of his shirt and travelling up his spine while his held her, chastely, by the shoulders.
‘We can,’ she whispered. ‘I want to . . .’ He was so thin; she traced the line of his shoulder blades with her fingers, desperate to comfort him, to feed him. He seemed to hesitate, but she was sure of herself now. She lifted his shirt over his head, then pulled off her T-shirt, and – with a flush of reckless lust – dropped her hands to unbutton his fly.
She’d had sex before, but only once, very drunk, with a rugby player who had known exactly what he was doing. It occurred to her now that Stephen was a virgin; that her little portion of experience would have to do for both of them. She was grateful for the whisky, and for the fact that they hadn’t had more. It made things both better and worse that they knew each other so well: the fumbling, the awkwardness, wasn’t something they could pretend not to notice. But nature, surely, and the momentum of the night . . . and she wanted it so badly, the intensity and intimacy she had dreamt about in the church that morning as the sunlight was coloured and shaped by the stained glass. And he was – thank God – he was ready for her; she could feel his penis now, pressing against her fingers as she sought it out, and the little groan of release as he let her take it.
The roughness of it took her by surprise. She had imagined him tentative, courteous, but tears rose, shockingly, in her eyes as he drove himself into her, and for a few minutes she could think of nothing but wishing for it to be over. And then it was, and as he slumped down on her chest the tears trickled down towards her temples until she wiped them crossly away, feeling naïve and idiotic. It was no surprise, she told herself, that the first time, or even the second . . . It might be the end of the twentieth century, but the sophistication of their understanding was no substitute for experience. What mattered was that they had done it; that they had wanted to.
Even so, she couldn’t stop another wash of tears. The sharp pain between her legs had spread to her back, a kind of numbing ache that made her feel compromised, almost abused, although of course if anyone had pushed things forward, it was her. She heard her brothers’ voices now in her head, the casual way they talked about women when they didn’t think she was listening, and she wondered whether it was her fault that it hadn’t been nicer; whether she had hastened things on until he couldn’t help but force himself into her and keep going, going until he had finished. Perhaps she had spoiled it for him, too.
For as long as she could bear she lay still, and then she braced her back, hoping she could ease her hips into a more comfortable position without seeming to reject Stephen. But even that tiny movement stirred him, and she couldn’t withhold a murmur of relief as he slid off her. His head was close to hers still, and she adjusted her position as discreetly, as unfussily, as she could manage. His eyes were open, watching her, and she was terrified now that he would guess how much it had hurt, how much it had disappointed her. She lifted a hand to stroke his cheek.
‘That was lovely,’ she said.
‘Good.’ He sighed; perhaps with relief, Cressida thought. She felt a gush of pity, then, at the thought that he’d been worried. It mattered to men as well as women – perhaps more to men – that they were good at sex. He looked different, she thought, a kind of sadness about him, and she wanted to ease it away.
‘Unexpected and lovely,’ she said next, so that he wouldn’t suspect that this was why she’d come to his room, all those hours ago.
He made a little noise – of contentment, she hoped – and moved his hand to pat her arm, and then he shut his eyes. It must be very late, Cressida thought, perhaps three or four by now, but she didn’t feel sleepy. A sense of elation was creeping cautiously into her mind, like a car being reversed into a narrow parking space, but she still felt too numb to enjoy it, too jangled and confused. She wanted to stay here, with Stephen’s warm flesh to remind her what had happened, but she wanted to be on her own, too, to digest it.
For a little while longer she lay beside him, feeling the dampness between her legs seeping inexorably out, and then there was a horrifying moment when she wondered whether there was blood as well as semen down there, and she clenched herself tight and whispered, ‘Stephen, I’m going to go now.’
His eyes opened for a moment, and there was a glimpse, then, of the Stephen she knew; the one who had put his jacket on the ground so she could sit on it and caught her arm when she’d tripped.
‘All right,’ he said.
‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ Cressida said. She hesitated a moment, and then she leant across to kiss him before slipping carefully out of the side of the bed.
As she made her way upstairs towards the bathroom, a sound from behind Judith’s door made her freeze in horror. Had she . . . had they been overheard? she wondered. Did Judith know . . . ? The sound came again – a sort of giggle, deep and luxurious, followed by a murmuring and a sigh of pleasure. Cressida stood, motionless and disbelieving. My God, Judith, she heard, oh my God. Bill’s voice, muffled but unmistakable. Bill in Judith’s room, and the two of them . . . Oh please, Judith was saying. Oh yes please.
Cressida turned abruptly into the bathroom and pulled the door shut behind her, trembling with mortification and disgust. How dare they? How could they, with Marmion, guileless Marmion, almost within earshot?
But there was more to her distress than that. There was a shameful, humiliating sense of envy. How could it – why should it – be so different for them?
June 1995
Judith
‘My God, you’re beautiful,’ he said. His voice was gentle, the Midlands lilt more a colour than an edge, close up. His face was softened, too, by the almost-darkness, the shadowing of night that made them both mysterious. ‘You’re like a painting. Like a mermaid.’
‘Luring sailors to their death.’ Judith smiled, and before he could kiss her again she pulled back a little, stealing a moment to look at him, to try to take in what was happening. There was a throb in her head which must be the sound of her heart, loosed from its tethers and galloping, galloping.
His fingers were tracing a question mark along her flank. Judith shivered.
‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said. ‘Not quite a mermaid, but . . .’
She had never identified his smell before, but she recognised it now: an intense draught of musk and loam, kindling something surely too pleasurable to be guilt. She shut her eyes, deliciously conscious of the heaviness of his body and the strangeness of it; the strangeness of feeling, in this moment, that every exchange of glances, every shared joke or accidental touch of hand on sleeve over the last three years had fused into something coherent and substantial. Every fleeting scent of him, too: she realised now that she had always been aware of that, a powerful, primitive signal that had made her by turns restless or irrit-able or inexplicably happy when she caught a drift of it. Ever since that first day, she thought. All that time she’d known all this, at some level.
‘You’re so different,’ he said. ‘I can’t . . .’
‘Different – from Marmion?’
‘Oh, Marmion . . . Please don’t . . .’
The thrill of transgression pulsed through her skin.
‘I won’t,’ she said. Won’t think of that; won’t mention it. This isn’t really happening, after all. It’s a fantasy, an impossibility. His hands all over her, making something new of her, drawing out desires and delights she’d never imagined. She could feel the dull ache of suspense between her thighs again now, the delicious anticipation. She slipped her hand down his belly, its sinuous assurance making her shudder.
‘More?’ she asked. ‘Are you . . .?’
‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh yes. Oh, Judith . . .’
*
The chiming of the cuckoo clock hovered at first on the fringe of her hearing, like a jokey sound effect. She lay very still, her brain operating in slow motion.
‘Is that that bloody clock?’ Bill sank down on her chest as though in despair, although she knew there was none of that in him. ‘God, that’s some timing.’
Judith snickered, luxuriating in the immediacy that made anything beyond the two of them feel hazy and unreal. She could hear his breath in her hair, rapid and gratified. But the cuckoo chirped on, blithely insistent; and with each stroke it twitched them both a little further out of their reverie. At last she heard it whirr and wheeze, settling itself to wait out another hour.
‘It can’t be five o’clock yet,’ Bill said.
Judith glanced at the bedside table. ‘It is.’
She knew as she said it that she was ending the enchantment, and feeling Bill’s body tense against hers she regretted it sharply.
‘Oh fuck,’ he said. ‘Oh God, Judith, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go. I can’t . . . I have no idea . . .’
‘No idea of what?’ Her voice sounded calm, almost steely, and she wondered a little at it. Some other part of her must be speaking, she thought. The elements of her had melted apart; she could hardly tell who she was just now. ‘No idea how this happened, or how you’re going to explain it to Marmion?’
‘I’m such a shit,’ he said. ‘You must think I’m . . .’
‘You didn’t exactly blunder in here and take advantage of me.’
‘No,’ he said, his voice softening again.
He’d come inside to fetch a glass of water, and she’d been woken by the creak of the back door, or perhaps by something else – an owl; she’d heard owls here. They’d passed in the narrow corridor, footsteps muffled by Fay’s thick rugs, sleep-soft bodies brushing up against each other. That was all; that was all it took. The safety of the night and its anonymity, removing their consciousness of identities and rights and the proper order of things.
‘Feel free to, though.’ She smiled, reaching a hand to smooth his hair down. This was a different mode, more familiar to her, trading tenderness for provocation. Oh, it was delicious trying out his responses, feeling him scrambling to find himself again, and her echo, her imprint resonating through him. ‘Feel free to take advantage of me any time you like.’
‘Oh Judith,’ he said again. ‘Oh fucking hell, what am I going to do?’
‘That depends,’ she said. ‘For now that depends on whether Marmion is awake when you get back. On whether she suspects anything.’
‘I can’t not tell her.’ He rolled away now and sat up, his body very white in the faint light from the uncurtained window.
‘Of course you can. For the moment. It’s not as though we . . .’
He swung back to look at her, his expression stricken, and Judith’s heart lurched. My God, she thought, he really – but the rest of the sentence eluded her; the rest of the expression of surprise or pleasure or dismay. Bill lifted a hand to cradle her face, and she nestled into it for a moment, brushing her lips against his thumb.
‘We’ll talk,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow. We’ll find a moment. I can’t really think n
ow, except that – I’m glad, whatever happens.’
‘I am too,’ Judith said. It wasn’t much to acknowledge, but the honesty of it felt like something weighty passing between them.
‘It feels like . . .’ Bill faltered, and she shook her head fleetingly to shush him.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘Don’t say anything else.’
*
When the door had shut behind him, Judith could feel the silence trembling around her. She tried out, for a moment, the theory that she’d invented what had just happened, or merely wished it, but she knew it was too outlandish a tale for that. Too outlandish to have happened in any realm except blatant reality.
She lay on her back, imagining Bill’s footsteps re-crossing the dew-laden garden. Now that he was gone, and all she was left with were impressions – the pressure of his hip bone here, the tickling of his murmured voice there – the other reality of him came back into her mind: the Bill she’d known for three years, whom she’d watched becoming steadily more inseparable from Marmion. The Bill who sang like a young Pavarotti and spoke like the Birmingham lad he was, whose cheery assurance hid a strain of doubt and hunger she recognised instinctively.
Two things surprised her, as the grey dawn sidled over the mountains and into the room: that she’d held out for so long, and that it all seemed so simple now. She’d kept telling herself he wasn’t her type, but it was like the jigsaw piece you’d never have selected for a crucial place until you tried it and saw how perfectly, how unexpectedly it completed the picture.
But, she thought. But. It might seem obvious to her – and perhaps to Bill, too – that his romance with Marmion was a sweet, childish insignificance, but to Marmion . . . Marmion was a sweet child; that was the difficulty. She’d fallen in love with the first man she’d met, Judith thought, as though she’d been programmed to do it: as though she’d been fed a Midsummer Night’s Dream love potion before she arrived in Cambridge.
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