Virginia Fly is Drowning

by Angela Huth

  ‘Who else?’ Virginia said, shyly. Then, more daring: ‘If you don’t mind my saying, you look very nice too.’ He wore a beautiful flowered silk shirt, and his face was more handsome than she remembered.

  He didn’t seem to notice the remark but was at the drinks table mixing things. Virginia wondered if the action was automatic in his world: people arrive – give them an instant drink. At home, the average guest had to sit it out for several hours before he was offered anything stronger than coffee or tea.

  ‘I’ve had the most bloody awful lunch,’ he said, ‘it put me off work for the whole afternoon. Rows, rows, rows. God I hate rows. They upset my stomach. Give me indigestion. Do you ever have rows with anyone?’

  ‘No. Only silences, with my mother, sometimes.’

  ‘Better than rows. Anyhow, they’re over for to-day. We’ll go out and have a smashing evening.’

  He smiled, and gave her one of the thick glasses of whisky: she liked the glass better to-night. More used to it, it didn’t hurt her hand.

  She sat back in a sofa of silk cushions, one foot under her, one resting on the thick carpet, and felt a sense of infinite peace. She could sit here evening after evening, listening to him, understanding about his office rows (for she presumed what he had been referring to were office rows), soothing him, pouring his drinks, offering comfort.

  ‘You look very serious,’ said Ulick. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘About your life.’

  ‘Oh, my life. That’s something I try not to think about in the round, as it were. I try to stick to thinking only about each day as it comes. It’s an old philosophy, but it works quite well when you get used to it.’ It may have been Virginia’s imagination, but for a moment she thought he looked quite sad.

  They went to a lively film about Tchaikovsky. Halfway through, Ulick took one of Virginia’s hands, traced round the shape of her nails with his finger, then put it back again. The gesture, she found, made her breathe very fast. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. Later they went to dinner in a small Polish restaurant in Battersea. The chef, a huge laughing man, joined them at their table for most of the evening, pressing bottles of free wine upon them and entertaining them with stories of his childhood in Poland. Back in the car Ulick put his hand on Virginia’s knee, and she just stopped herself from telling him that it made her feel quite extraordinarily unusual.

  In the house, he led her at once up to his brown felt dressing-room. There, he put his arms round her.

  ‘Will you kiss me?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think I ought to,’ Virginia replied automatically. Her body stiffened.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t really think.’

  Ulick kissed her for a while. Then he stood back.

  ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all the evening. You’re irresistible.’ Virginia smiled. He picked up her small suitcase and led the way to his room. Virginia followed.

  This, too, was a dark room: navy hessian on the walls, lights that shone dim blobs of light on to the carpet.

  ‘Get into bed,’ said Ulick, putting down her case. ‘I’ll join you in a moment.’ He disappeared through an almost invisible door in the wall to the bathroom.

  Virginia got undressed, folded up her clothes neatly, through years of habit, and got into bed naked. She wondered vaguely if, when Ulick came back, she should go to the bathroom and do her teeth. Ulick’s sheets were very expensive; cool and smooth even after a few nights wear. Virginia wiggled about in the huge bed with pleasure, stretching her toes down to the coolest bits, fanning her arms across the pillows. Very much later, it seemed, Ulick came back, a towel wrapped round his waist.

  ‘Move over.’ Virginia giggled, shutting her eyes. Ulick got into bed and switched off the light. In a moment he was kissing her again, more fiercely this time, and she could feel the whole length of his body pressed against the whole length of hers. His hand ran over her breast, stomach, thigh, causing her to tremble.

  ‘You’re shaking,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘Aren’t you used to this sort of thing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’ He lifted her head on to his shoulder, very gently, and touched her hair and her eyelids.

  ‘Shall I tell you something?’ Virginia felt reckless.

  ‘What? Anything. Tell me anything you like.’

  ‘I’ve never felt like this in my life before, never, ever, ever, ever.’

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about your wisteria tree, and wondering what you were doing.’

  ‘Well, I thought about you quite a bit, too. I thought: she’s not my usual kind of girl, but there’s something about her. Those awful gloves!’ Virginia giggled again, and rubbed her nose against his face. ‘I thought: perhaps I’d better see her again just to make sure she’s not my kind of girl. Then you arrived looking so pretty, and you laughed at my jokes and didn’t ask awkward questions.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So here we are.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I hope we will be again, lots of times.’

  Ulick crushed her to him, forcing her body to go slack and her legs to part. She screwed up her eyes against his throat, so that her mind became a screen of black dots on blackness. Then, with a shocking suddenness, the scene lighted. The black dots turned to yellow. Light flooded from somewhere. She felt Ulick go rigid and push her away. She opened her eyes.

  The bedroom was in full light. A woman stood by he door, quivering. She was tall, with curly hair and a tragic face, about thirty. She might have been crying.

  ‘What’s this woman doing in our bed?’ she asked, looking at Virginia. Ulick held the sheet in both hands under his chin. The whites of his knuckles showed. He blinked very calmly.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s our house, you may remember. Our bed. I have my keys. You’re my husband.’ She didn’t move.

  ‘Curious timing for a visit,’ said Ulick.

  ‘I have every right to come here whenever I like. Unless you buy me out.’ Her voice was very low and quiet. She moved over to the bed, and stood looking down at Ulick and Virginia. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said, ‘but could this woman go now?’

  ‘No,’ said Ulick. ‘It’s you who must go.’

  ‘Never,’ said the woman. She sounded tired. She sat on the bed. Ulick moved his legs. ‘Remember, darling, what you always said?’ She smiled very slightly. ‘You always said – we always joked – that if ever I caught you at it, I wasn’t to go. I was to wait around until you got rid of the – woman.’

  ‘Those were our joking days,’ said Ulick. ‘You seem to have forgotten, they’re over now.’

  The woman took a cigarette and lighter out of her bag. She reached over to the bedside table for the ashtray, which she balanced on Ulick’s knee as if she had done the same thing many times before. She puffed smoke into the air, very calmly, as if this were a normal situation. Her eyes were bright green, strained. Very slowly she swivelled her head towards Virginia.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t say,’ replied Ulick quickly. ‘Don’t say anything to her.’ Virginia saw the woman flinch.

  ‘Well,’ she said, through more smoke, so it was impossible to see the effort on her face that sounded in her voice, ‘we seem to have come to an impasse, then, don’t we? Because I’m not leaving.’

  ‘You are,’ said Ulick. ‘Please go quietly with no fuss. I’ll ring you in the morning.’

  ‘No,’ said the woman.

  There was a long silence. Then Virginia, who felt her body and mind numb and stiff with shock, heard her own voice a long way off speaking some kind of common sense.

  ‘This is ridiculous. I’ll go,’ she said. The woman laughed.

  ‘It’s quite amusing, if you think about it,’ she said. Ulick put an arm over Virginia’s chest, restraining her.

  ‘Don’t move. Imoge
n will go.’ So that was her name. Mrs Imogen Brand.

  ‘I won’t,’ said Imogen.

  ‘But I definitely will.’ Virginia kicked at the bed clothes, baring her breasts. ‘I don’t want to come between you.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Imogen, staring at Virginia’s nipples. ‘You see, darling, your woman’s more sensible than you.’ She patted Ulick’s knee. His eyes froze.

  ‘This is a ludicrous and undignified scene,’ he said. ‘If you persist in being so obstinate, please go away for a few minutes so that Virginia can get dressed and I can talk to her.’

  Imogen stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.

  ‘Very well. I’ll do that.’ She left the room, very tall and straight, conscious of the beauty of her movements.

  As soon as she had gone Virginia sprang up and began to dress fast. Ulick sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘What can I say?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I should have told you I was married.’

  ‘It wasn’t relevant to our situation.’

  ‘That’s true. She’s never done anything like this before. Though she was so impossible at lunch to-day, I thought something was up.’ He looked up at Virginia. ‘Stay the night in the dressing-room and we can talk it all over in the morning.’

  ‘No thank you, really.’ She combed her hair with her fingers.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I have friends.’ Ulick nodded.

  ‘All right for money?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘It was such a nice evening, too. I always forget to remember that things get snatched away.’

  Virginia smiled at him.

  ‘Don’t be over dramatic, or think any more about it. I was just an easy lay, except there wasn’t quite time to get laid. Things are all a matter of timing.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all. Don’t think of it like that. I like you. You listened to me.’

  ‘Most plain girls are good listeners.’ She picked up her case. ‘Well, I’ll be going.’ Ulick, too, stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, again. ‘Can I call you?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much point,’ Virginia said. ‘In fact, I’d really rather you didn’t. Please don’t. It wouldn’t be good for my fantasy world.’ She managed another smile.

  ‘O.K.’ He stood up and kissed her on the cheek. They were both limp, drained, now, all desire gone. ‘Good-bye, Virginia Fly. Be careful who you marry.’

  At the door of the room Virginia met Imogen, who had changed into a white cotton dressing-gown that showed the lines of her breasts, and thighs.

  ‘That was quick,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you out.’ Virginia followed her down the stairs. ‘You must understand, Ulick and I have a perfectly dreadful married life,’ she was saying, ‘but we can never quite get round to giving it up. Habit or something, I suppose, though now I’ve moved out maybe we’ll get down to it. Anyhow, I hope you won’t have been too affected by all this – or too charmed. He’s a real old charmer when he wants to be, isn’t he? Bloody awful for most of the time, though.’ She opened the door, her eyes sparkling and hard. ‘I’ll tell you what, though. I’m a well-known dog-in-the-manger. I don’t want him half the time, but I don’t want anyone else to have him either. So I should leave him alone, if I were you. Unless, that is, you want to find yourself cited.’ She smiled, witchlike, in the gloomy light from the street. Virginia straightened herself: still she only came to Imogen’s shoulder.

  ‘You’ll find a taxi in the King’s Road.’ Imogen pointed a long white hand in the right direction. ‘You must admit, it was quite funny,’ she added. ‘One day, perhaps, I’ll tell you the real story of our marriage.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Virginia, ‘but I wouldn’t be terribly interested. Neither you, nor Ulick, nor your marriage concerns me in any way. Now I must go.’ At the bottom of the steps she looked up to find Imogen still watching her. She decided to take a parting shot, for all its childishness. ‘The bed will still be warm,’ she shouted.

  The door slammed. Virginia ran.

  In a telephone box in the King’s Road the tears came. Choking sobs she was incapable of controlling. She stood for some time, leaning her head against the glass panes of the box, waiting for the spasms that wracked her body to die away. It was cold and the air was a ball of stale smoke.

  When she had calmed down she picked up a telephone book and dialled the professor’s number. She could stay the night there – he had often suggested it – and go home by train in the morning. The telephone rang eleven times.

  ‘Is that the Professor?’

  ‘Who is it, for heaven’s sake? My God, Virginia Fly.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? It’s two o’clock, isn’t it? In the morning.’

  ‘I expect so. I’m sorry to bother you so late –’

  ‘– that’s no trouble.’

  ‘– but can I come over and spend the rest of the night? There’ve been a few complications.’

  ‘Complications? My dear Virginia, of course. Forgive me if I sound so stupid with sleep. Put yourself in a taxi at once. I am waiting for you.’

  In the taxi Virginia felt weak with exhaustion. She lay back on the leather ridged seat that was still warm from the previous passenger. Perhaps that would be a good wholetime function in life, she thought. Warming things for other people.

  ‘Virginia Fly, whatever is it about you?’ she asked out loud.

  The professor was dressed; the lights were on. He had made up a bed on the huge sofa and had a glass of brandy waiting.

  ‘What delicious clothes,’ he said, when he saw her anguished face. ‘But you must go to sleep quickly because you look quite tired. I won’t disturb you in the morning, and the sun can’t get through the thickness of the curtains. So sleep on, and then we will have a breakfast.’

  The brandy warmed Virginia, stopped her shivering. She watched the professor, his shadowy hulk by the desk, shufflng through papers.

  ‘Now, is there anything I can get for you?’ Virginia knew he was trying not to look concerned.

  ‘Nothing. And thank you for being so kind.’

  ‘Don’t be so foolish.’ A little later he left her.

  The sofa was very comfortable. In the dark, the evening ran through Virginia’s mind like a film. At one point, there were words, sub-titles, upon the screen: Try not to think of your life in the round. Think only of to-day.

  When she thought about it, Ulick was pretty unoriginal.

  Virginia felt quite happy before she went to sleep.

  She was woken by the professor drawing back the curtains, letting in broad shafts of late spring sun through the vast windows. They lit up the warm shambles of the room.

  ‘I have croissants for us,’ he said. ‘They do very good croissants down the road, fresh every morning, and you can’t tell me you’re not hungry?’

  He went away and came back with a tray laid with pretty china: black cherry jam to go with the croissants. He set it on a low table beside the sofa and drew up a chair.

  ‘It is so long since I shared breakfast with anyone, I am quite out of practice.’ He was factual rather than self-pitying. Virginia praised the Austrian coffee. ‘There are some things we can do,’ he said, smiling.

  No sooner had he buttered his croissant than he got up, crossed the room to the fireplace and fetched the photograph of his wife and daughter. He handed it to Virginia. The family at breakfast, she thought. This time, she was ready for it.

  ‘That is my wife and daughter in the Alps.’ He tapped the photograph with three fingers. ‘They were killed soon after that picture was taken. I loved them very much. I still love them, but they are dead. Oh, my God, I can’t make a speech – Virginia Fly, will you marry me?’

  Virginia looked up at him, handed back the photograph. Backlit by the sun, his grey hair stood up like a spiky halo. His shoulders were hunched forward, his kind eyes tense, as he
waited for her answer.

  ‘I meant to wait till after breakfast,’ he added, ‘but seeing you this morning, asleep, I couldn’t.’

  Virginia smiled. Then she lay back on her pillows, shutting her eyes. The screen beneath her lids still glowed with sun. Childish incidents, silly speculations, grown-up longings, all from the past, came to her mind. She compared them with the present.

  The professor, sitting beside her in silence, waited.

  Chapter 9

  Virginia and Caroline had talked about marriage long before they ever discussed sex. Aged nine, Caroline was determined to marry a millionaire. Virginia was quite happy with the thought of a farmer.

  One summer holidays Caroline was staying with the Flys for a week, sharing the spare-room with Virginia. Lights were out: they were supposed to be trying to go to sleep.

  ‘He’ll propose to me on a yacht,’ Caroline was saying, ‘somewhere in the Mediterranean.’

  ‘Very ordinary,’ scoffed Virginia. ‘Me, I’ll be on a walking tour in Northumberland. It’ll suddenly come on to rain very hard and I’ll shelter in a nearby barn. I’ll just be sitting on the hay waiting for it to stop, when this lovely farmer comes in. He asks me if I’d like to come into the farmhouse to get warm and dry and have something to eat. So we go and sit in front of his fire and straight away he says he loves me terribly much and will I marry him? Of course I say yes, and we live happily ever after.’

  Half asleep, she imagined the exquisite pleasure of baking bread for her farmer, sitting by his side in the evenings, feeding his hens, calling him across the farmyard, raising his children. For years this daydream stuck with her but, somehow, she never went on a walking tour in Northumberland.

  When Virginia was twenty, the girl next door, who for many years had been noted and pitied for her lack of looks, married a sailor.

  ‘And if she can get someone, then anyone can,’ Virginia remembered her mother saying, as they walked back from the church. The bride, looking her worst in a lot of misguided make-up, had just driven off in a hired Rolls. ‘Still, I suppose you must admit it, she looks pretty radiant.’