by Alec Waugh
Mentally she shook herself. It was time to be matter-of-fact and practical. How, she asked, was she to set about this mission?
‘It will be very simple,’ he assured her. ‘We have a number of agencies along the southern Mediterranean. Beirut is the best. Hashish is grown there, along the valley between Damascus and the coast. But it may not be easy for you to get there. Tangier might be simpler, or Tunis. It is a question of your finding the place that will be most convenient for you.’
‘It wouldn’t be convenient for me to go to any of those places. The doctor recommended me to take that trip to Malta. That was an exceptional case.’
‘Precisely; and that’s why we don’t want you to repeat it. This next trip of yours must be entirely above board. It must be a family trip taken with your husband; with your children as well, preferably.’
‘My husband and the children?’
‘Indeed, why not? You are, I imagine, going to take a family holiday this year.’
‘I don’t know about the children. But my husband and I had thought of taking a cruise in July.’
‘A Mediterranean cruise?’
‘We had thought of going to the Norwegian fjords.’
Mr. Frank shook his head. ‘Scandinavia, no. We have depots there. We deliver goods, but we don’t collect goods. The Mediterranean through its links with the Orient is our source of supply. Surely you could persuade him to go to the Mediterranean instead.’
‘I suppose I could.’
‘It shouldn’t be difficult. Every Englishman feels the need for sunshine. Almost anywhere along the southern shore will do.’
As he presented it, nothing could be simpler than the project which he had in mind. ‘I will keep in touch with you. I will telephone you every other Tuesday, starting on Tuesday week. As soon as you have worked out your trip you will let me know. Then I will arrange a place where it will be easy for you to collect the packet. It will be a certain tobacconist, let us say in Tunis. We will fix a time, roughly. You will have a code. You will say. “I want some mild cigarettes, because I have a weak throat.” You will be given rather a large packet and that is all that there will be to it.’
‘It sounds very simple, as you set it out.’
‘And believe you me, that’s exactly how it will prove to be. I have been in this business for ten years. Nothing has gone wrong yet.’
Myra watched him from the window. He paused on the pavement, looked from right to left, then crossed the street. He did not hurry. There was nothing particular about his walk. He did not limp or drag his feet. He was wearing a dark grey felt hat; it was not particularly new. He turned to the right, towards Church Row. On his way to the tube station probably. A car went by and then a truck. A youngish woman pushing a baby carriage was coming up the street towards him. She did not look at him. He was not the kind of person at whom anyone would look. He was completely ordinary.
He reached the end of the street and turned right again. Another minute and he was out of sight. The street looked just the same. Everything looked just the same. On the table was the novel she had been reading. She picked it up, sat down in the chair, and started reading where she had left off. Her eyes travelled down the page but her mind did not take in the meaning of the words. Everything looked the same. But everything was not the same. Nothing could be the same again.
She closed the book, rose, went into the kitchen. She habitually made her preparations for dinner directly after lunch. She had planned a casserole. It was simmering quietly. There was nothing that needed doing for at least an hour, when she would stir it and add a little wine. She had laid the table. She had looked forward to a quiet hour with a book before she went into the nursery for tea. That would be at half past four. It was now five to. She went back to the sitting room. She turned on the TV—a cricket match. She changed over to ITV. A cowboy film she had already seen. She switched the machine off. She stood in the centre of the room; she needed company. She wanted to talk to someone on the telephone. If only her mother did not live so far away. Long-distance calls were for occasional use and then after seven. Who else was there? Someone she could ring up, to talk to, as she had when she was a débutante. But then it had been different. All that ringing up after a dance and comparing notes. You had as a débutante so much in common with so many others. You had not, as a young married woman. Who was there she could call? She ran over a list of names: Barbara, Jocelyn, Edith, Kitty. Kitty. Why not Kitty? It was through Kitty that all this had started. She had an excuse for calling Kitty. It was time for a cutlet-for-cutlet project. Kitty? She dialled the number. But no answer. Kitty. Why hadn’t she asked Victor right out on that first evening? None of this would have happened if she had said. ‘Kitty saw you in the Brompton Road today. What on earth were you doing there?’ Why had she been pettily anxious to ‘have something on him’? If only at Severods’ that Friday that guest had not arrived at the very moment when Kitty was going to say, ‘When I saw you from that bus on Wednesday.’ None of this need have happened. Chance had loaded the dice. It could all so easily not have happened. If only she had spoken at the very start. Now she was in too deep. Or wasn’t she? Was not there still a chance of getting out? Might she in two months’ time find herself thinking, If only I had confessed when that miserable weed first called. I had my last chance then. Now it is too late.
Pacing the room, she rehearsed the phrases which she could use if she had to break the news to Victor. She wouldn’t be diplomatic. She couldn’t lead up to it. She would break right in. ‘I’m in trouble,’ she would say. ‘I’m in serious trouble. I’ve been very stupid. You remember my telling you about the German woman whom I met in Malta? Yes, the one who gave me the whip. She made a pass at me. Out of curiosity, for the hell of it, I let her; now I’m being blackmailed.’ No apologies; no explanation. The facts. That was the way to do it. If she was to do it. Was she though? Was she?
As usual, soon after six, she heard the click of Victor’s latchkey in the door. Then the tap of his umbrella in the stand. His feet fell lightly on the stairway. The handle turned. There he was in the doorway, urbane and trim. With his tie fitting exactly in the centre of his collar, his shoes shining as though they had been freshly polished, the evening paper in his hand, the cuffs of his shirt projecting a precise two centimetres beyond his sleeves. Under his thin moustache flickered a half smile of well-being, of self-satisfaction, almost but not quite of smugness. ‘How’s your day been?’ he said, and in his tone of voice was the assumption that her day—since it was his day too, since she was a part of him—must necessarily have been as good as his. Her hackles rose. How the hell could she tell him how her day had gone? It’s all your fault, she thought. If you weren’t the kind of man you are none of this would have ever happened. Why aren’t you the kind of man to whom I can confess a thing like this? Why should you have the kind of job that a scandal like this would damage? It wouldn’t hurt an actor, a lawyer, a professor. Because you are a security risk, I’m vulnerable. That’s the only reason. It’s all your fault. No, there was no way of telling him. She had to go through with it.
Once again he had brought back a record, this time a long-playing one. It lasted almost to the end of their martinis. As the last notes vibrated along her nerves she took her first step along the road that was to lead her heaven knew where.
‘I’ve been thinking about our summer holiday,’ she said.
‘You’ve only been back a fortnight.’
‘That was my rest cure. I’m talking about our holiday.’
‘But you don’t want to go right away, do you?’
‘I’m not thinking about myself. I’m thinking about you. You need to get away, regularly.’
‘I don’t say I don’t.’
‘You work very hard. You must be getting tired. We’d planned to go after the Lord’s Test match. There isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t.’
‘I wouldn’t say there was.’
‘Then let’s stick to our programme. The fir
st week in July.’
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘Only I’m not so certain about Scandinavia.’
‘No?’
‘You can’t rely on the climate there, any more than you can here.’
‘That’s true.’
‘I’d prefer the Mediterranean.’
‘Even though you’ve already been there?’
‘That’s why. It’s made me greedy. The sun, the sand. What about a packaged tour?’
‘I’ve nothing against that.’
‘I’ve never seen the Arab world. Tunis, Beirut; aren’t there tours which take in six or eight different places?’
‘I’ll have my secretary get to work on it tomorrow.’
‘You’re very amenable.’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
Indeed why shouldn’t he? But a great many men wouldn’t be. They made their plans and didn’t want them changed, by anyone except themselves. I’m lucky. I shouldn’t be peevish. It’s all of it my fault.
But was it? He was charming during dinner. He complimented her on the dish she had prepared; he toasted her as he raised his glass of wine. ‘Skol,’ he said, looking into her eyes again. ‘How lucky we are,’ he said, ‘to live in a world that has no servants. How I’d hate to have a maid popping in and out, or worse still, standing behind your chair. We don’t have to hurry. We can dawdle or we can break off when we want. I feel that I’m a Victorian roué taking a chorus girl to supper in a private room; and you look so pretty. As if you were a chorus girl.’
He was gallant, witty, affectionate; no, no, she wouldn’t have him any different.
But later, after they had done the dishes, the rankling mood returned. It was half past nine. ‘Anything good on the box?’ he asked.
‘Not very much; only an old movie.’
‘Then I’ll pack up after the news. If I start watching a film, I’m certain to fall asleep; and that spoils my real sleep later.’
‘You sound as though you were fifty.’
‘I feel it after a full day’s work.’
And a long lunch in the Brompton Road maybe. She glared at him, suspiciously. Was he really tired out by work? How could she tell? What did she know about him, really know?
He picked up the newspaper. A man was supposed to read his paper in the tube, then tell his wife what was in it during dinner. He wasn’t supposed to bury himself in it after dinner.
The TV news ran its course. Student riots here, race riots there; conferences to save the franc; conferences to stop the Vietnam war; finally the cricket scores. He stood, his hand upon the switch. ‘Shall I leave it on for you?’
She shook her head. ‘I might fall asleep over it myself.’
He did not say goodnight. A quiver shot along her nerves. Did that mean that he was planning to see her later? He had been especially gallant across the dinner table. Since her return from Malta, she had marked in her diary the nights when they made love. The last time was six nights ago. Her heart was beating quickly as she went into her room. She had taken a bath before dinner; but now she stripped and sponged herself. She let a drop of scent fall into her palm. She smoothed it over her neck, behind her ears, across her breasts. She slipped on a nightdress that exposed her shoulders. She looked at herself in the glass; she thought, ‘Naomi would like the way I look. I guess a husband should.’
She pushed open her bedroom door. The bed was empty. No sound came from Victor’s dressing room. Her eyes flashed. He couldn’t, no he couldn’t have. She opened his door gently. Yes, he had. There he was, curled up, breathing steadily, asleep. A savage indignation surged within her. You’ve had it, chum, she thought. If you’re ever going to have it, now’s the time. A red and holy wrath consumed her. She went back to her bedroom. From beneath her handkerchiefs she extracted Naomi’s secret weapon. She brandished it, gloatingly, flicking the leather thong. She hesitated, she went back to the bathroom. She slipped off her nightgown. She picked up the phial of Aubergé. She let it drop into her palm; this time she spread her palm and fingers downwards from her navel, over her thighs, between her thighs. She put on a low-cut chiffon dressing jacket, a flimsy thing that barely reached her knees. She went back to Victor’s dressing room. He was still asleep. I could murder him, she thought; how dare anyone do this to me?
She stretched her hand out to his shoulder and then she checked. Suppose it didn’t work. Suppose that Naomi’d been wrong, that she herself had mistaken what had seemed to her a suddenly wakened interest on Victor’s part. Suppose, suppose … Everything might go wrong. Yet the surging wrath was stronger than her fears. If everything went wrong, then she would abdicate, break down, confess her folly, ask forgiveness, apologise and explain. Pray God, though, it wouldn’t have to be that way.
She put her hand upon his shoulder, shook him. ‘Wake up,’ she said.
He sat up, blinked. ‘What the hell is this?’ he asked.
‘You’ll know in good time. Do you see what this is?’
She held the whip before his eyes. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? This is my secret weapon. Now’s the time for it. Do you know what a C.T. is? Yes, of course you do. You’ve used it against women. But a man can be one, every bit as much. All that talk about taking out a chorus girl to supper, getting me worked up, then going off to sleep. Come along. Get ready for your medicine.’
She said it fiercely, but she said it laughingly. ‘Keep it light,’ that’s what Naomi had said. But her nerves were trembling, with fear and with excitement. Would he give way? If he did, it would be the most thrilling adventure of her life. But if he refused, if he sat up and told her not to be an ass … She almost hoped he would. What a relief to break down completely, to get all this off her chest, indulge in the luxury of confession; be a weak and silly woman that had to be looked after.
He raised himself upon his elbows. The room was in semi-darkness, lit by the light from her own room that shone through the open door. She could not read the expression on his face.
‘Come on,’ she ordered, ‘take off those pyjamas.’
He hesitated. Was he going to? This was her most dramatic moment. The whole course of her marriage depended upon what happened in the next thirty seconds. Their entire relationship would be changed. He lifted his right hand; his fingers went to the top button of his jacket. He’s going to, she thought, he’s going to. Slowly he undid the button. Her heart exulted. Now she knew what to do. Her role was clear. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘hurry up. Off with that jacket. Now the trousers. Lie down on your face. Put a pillow underneath your stomach. Yes, that’s the way.’
She stood above him. It was the first time that she had seen him quite like this: naked, with his hips lifted. She caught her breath. He was certainly a handsome creature. Not a ripple of surplus fat. Please stay that way, she thought. She lifted the whip and just as Naomi had done drew its tip slowly from the nape of the neck, down his spine, between the division of his buttocks. Then she struck, gently, just as Naomi had done. She chuckled. ‘Don’t think it’s going to be all like this. It’s got to be a long, long lesson. Not the way it was for you at school. Six of the best and quickly over with. This is going to last quite a time.’
She struck again, a good deal harder. ‘That one made a mark,’ she said. ‘And so will this one.’
The third stroke was definitely hard. ‘The next’s going to be even harder.’ It was delivered with almost her full strength. ‘That should leave a weal,’ she said. ‘You won’t dare to take a Turkish bath for several days.’ She paused between each stroke; watching each one’s effect. She was enjoying this, enjoying the sense of power that it gave her: of power over Victor; that she should be subjecting this punctilious civil servant to this treatment. The blows were getting stronger now. They must be hurting him. That, too, gave her a kick. He deserved this. It was his fault that she was in this mess. ‘At school you used to make it a point of honour not to squirm when you were being beaten. You’ll squirm tonight before I’ve finished with you. In fact I
shan’t stop until you do. So now you know.’
The next stroke was as hard as she could give, but he did not stir. She noted the mark that it had made. The next stroke would land in exactly the same place; so would the one after, and the one after that. He couldn’t stand many more of those. Two, three, four, each in the same place. But still he didn’t move. This was ridiculous. She had been challenged. She struck with every ounce of strength that she possessed. She was almost out of breath. She raised the whip again. Please let him move, she prayed. At tennis, she had been taught, ‘Hit through the ball, hit beyond the ball,’ She’d hit now not at Victor but the pillow under him. The blow was so fierce that it jarred her wrist, but yes, yes, it had made him squirm.
She sighed. ‘I said I would and I have, haven’t I?’ She flung the whip on the floor. She laid her hand on his hips, stroking them gently. They were so warm, they must be tingling. What next, she thought. There had to be a continuation, there had to be a climax. She remembered how Naomi had turned her over, had drawn her to the edge of the bed. Was there no equivalent for that?
An idea struck her; a flash of inspiration. ‘There’s one thing more,’ she said. ‘You must beg my forgiveness.’
She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Come on your knees in front of me,’ she ordered. He’ll do anything I order now, she thought. She sat on the very edge of the bed and spread her legs. She took him by the shoulders, and drew him to her. Their eyes met, but in the half light she could not read the expression in them. His head was a little above the level of her knees. She put her hands on his head and pressed it down. She remembered what Naomi had said, of certain things that a man was shy of doing with his own wife. She would give him his chance now. Gently, but firmly, she pressed down his head. His cheeks were rough against the soft flesh of her inner thighs. She drew him closer and closer. She was conscious of his breath warm against her. Was he going to take advantage of this chance, now in the heady aftermath of that long encounter? Was it true that a whip acted as an aphrodisiac? Please let him, she prayed. Oh please, please make him want to. He couldn’t conceivably not guess. She closed her eyes. She was tense with anticipation. Did she fancy it or wasn’t he of his own volition drawing closer; it wasn’t only her pressure on his head. Please, please, please, she prayed. And then even as she prayed, she felt first the sharp bristles of his moustache, then thrillingly, shatteringly, the soft touch of his tongue. ‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘Yes, oh yes, oh yes.’