by Alec Waugh
The saleswoman looked at her very straight, then nodded. ‘I have exactly what you need,’ she said. She opened a door and took from it a long oblong package that was prettily gift-wrapped. In the top corner was a label marked ‘Valentina. Chocolate liqueurs.’ ‘You should find these satisfactory. That will be ten shillings.’
Myra took up the package. It was rather heavy. Was Victor going to say, ‘What the hell’s that damned thing you’ve bought? You know that on these package tours one has to keep under that twenty-kilo limit?’ Would he suggest that she break open the package and distribute its contents among other parcels? What did the contents look like? She had never seen opium or heroin or whatever the hell it was. You didn’t realise the complications till you were faced with them. What do I do with it now?
She remembered a play called Ten-Minute Alibi in which a man had worked out the perfect alibi for a murder, but then one little unexpected miscalculation upset the entire schedule. Was weight going to be the problem now? Could she slip it into her handbag? She judged the size. She judged its weight. Scarcely. What about that brocade? Did she really need it? She had thought she did. It was going to have been her one extravagance: silver-shot Damascene brocade. But if weight was to be the problem, and on a package tour you simply could not go beyond your allowance … It wasn’t like a standardised commercial BEA flight where you paid excess.
Back in her hotel, she weighed the package between her hands. Why hadn’t she brought the scales? Three pounds, four pounds, who could say? How could she tell what Victor was planning to buy? They had weighed their suitcases very carefully, forty pounds to each; that left four pounds extra for each. She couldn’t with these Valentina chocolates carry brocade as well. What was Victor buying? He’d be expecting her to bring back something special. Valentina chocolates? She herself never ate chocolates. She watched her figure. Whom had she bought them for? In what unexpected complications she had found herself.
She sat in the window annexe, the package between her knees. What would happen to it? What would the gangster world do for it and do with it? What lives might not be corrupted by it? Could she be blamed for that? Were those lives not already ruined? If she did not bring this package through the Customs, someone else would. And was it fair to argue that because she was bringing this package, some innocent fifteen-year-old girl at present absorbing an English Lit course at Roedean might find herself destined for destruction? Could you go back that far? Earth ‘ailed from its prime foundations’. If you were to look for first causes, ultimate results, where did you land yourself? Yet if you were to say, ‘If I didn’t do this, somebody else would,’ what a contemptible alibi was that. Could you ever do more than face each immediate problem by its effect on you, and on those dear to you? Was she not forced to prevent that tape being allowed to ruin her life with Victor and with her children, with Victor’s career, with all that Victor’s career meant not only to himself and to her, but to the country? Victor was someone who had to be protected. It was useless to ask herself what damage this elegantly boxed package would spread and in what lives, any more than the bomber over enemy territory could afford to think, That bomb may have killed a potential Einstein, Pasteur, Mozart.
She put the box at the bottom of her suitcase. Victor and Martin had gone to a museum. Kitty would not be due at the St. George for another hour. It was no use buying brocades that would make her overweight. Better read a Maigret. There was a certain impersonality about those records of detected crime that harmonised with her mood. Simenon withheld judgment. He recorded what happened, when and where and how. Things happened in such a way, inevitably, step by step. That’s how it had been with her; that’s how it was continuing to be with her. And what else was there for her to do about it?
She shrugged, and read about Maigret, and Madame Maigret and Janvier, and all those cold beers and sandwiches, until it was time to go down to the St. George.
‘Now tell me what you’ve bought. I see you haven’t brought it with you. I can’t wait to see it.’
Myra was evasive. ‘I’ve not made up my mind. I’ll go back later. You tell me what you’ve found out.’
Kitty laughed. ‘I got as little there as I got out of Pierre. I played it the wrong way. I’ll plan my campaign more carefully next time.’
‘Why not stage it in Soho? There’s nothing that can’t be found in London.’
‘By foreigners, I know. But not by Londoners. Englishmen are quite different out of their own country. Every American will tell you that. You can’t imagine a husband who’s spent his whole day in Whitehall going to a striptease in the evening.’
‘A lot do, don’t they?’
‘Not Londoners. Or if they do, they’re taking out-of-town customers from Birmingham. You don’t get men like Martin and Victor going there, but here it’s different. English let their hair down when the white cliffs of Dover fade. If we’d gone, the four of us, to one of those places that my uncle used to describe, and had put on an exhibition …’ She paused and an eager light flickered in her eyes.
‘What do you think would have happened?’ Myra asked.
‘That’s what I’d like to find out. Anything might have happened. Did you ever read that novel La Garçonne that caused so much scandal in 1921?’
‘I thought it rather good.’
‘So did I. Do you remember that scene where they all went to a bordello, men and women?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘You know what a partouze is?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t say that that would have happened, but something would. I want to know what that something is, and that something would have led to something else.’
Myra closed her eyes. She tried to picture a partouze. It seemed bizarre. But the idea excited her.
‘Look, here they come,’ said Kitty. It was a hot, sultry morning but the two Englishmen looked very spruce and cool in their well-pressed summer-weight light trousers, their sandals, their short-sleeved sports shirts with foulard four-in-hands knotted at the throat. Each was wearing a light Panama hat with a club ribbon around it.
‘Look at them now,’ said Kitty. ‘Don’t they look formal and correct? Don’t your fingers itch to muss them up? Mine do.’
The tour itinerary marked the afternoon as free. ‘I’m for a siesta,’ Victor said.
Kitty caught Myra’s eye. An eyelid flickered.
Victor and Myra had a twin bedded room. On one side of the wall was a wide cupboard, with a long glass mirror. From the pillows you could not see your reflection, but if you sat on the bed halfway down, you could. An idea came to her. I’ll get him in the mood, she thought. He was lying on his back outside the sheets, his hands crossed under his head. He had on only a light silk dressing gown, nothing under it. She lay beside him. ‘Tell me,’ she asked, ‘did you ever beat a woman?’
‘Once.’
‘How come?’
‘She drank too much. She got rather silly when she was tipsy. I said, “The next time you get drunk in public, I’ll thrash you when we get home.” She did, so I did.’
‘How did you do it?’
‘I put her across my knee.’
‘What did you beat her with?’
‘My hand.’
‘Then she can’t have been wearing any clothes.’
‘She wasn’t.’
‘What about you?’
‘I had my trousers on—the first time.’
‘So it happened often.’
‘Once a week or so.’
‘It was more fun with your clothes off, for you I mean.’
‘Of course.’
‘So it was fun?’
‘I was angry with her for being tipsy. She embarrassed me in public. I wanted to hurt her. Yet at the same time, yes, I did enjoy it.’
‘Not like those schoolboys you caned for being late for chapel.’
‘Oh, no, quite different.’
‘What about her? How did she take it?’
‘It�
��s quaint but I’ve an idea she rather liked it.’
‘What made you think that?’
‘I think she got drunk on purpose.’
And that, though Myra, was where you got the idea of pretending to be asleep.
‘She sounds an interesting female. You must tell me more about her.’
She looked down the bed. She slid aside his dressing gown. As she had expected. ‘That’s a very ambitious profile you’ve got there,’ she said. She moved away from him and off the bed. She went on her knees. In the mirror she could see her head reflected, looking down at the centre of his body. He could not tell from the pillows what she was seeing. She stretched out her arms, the one across his stomach, one across his knees; she pulled him towards her till he was on the very edge of the bed. She lowered her head above the surgent column. She watched her tongue flicker along its length, saw her lips close over it; her fingers were about its base. How firm and yet how soft. Kitty had been right. It was exciting. She recalled the film advertisements of children sucking lollipops, how they slid them in and out, nibbling at them. She knew exactly what to do, as a child would derive the maximum enjoyment from its sweetmeat, tantalising itself in its delayed fulfilment. Why had she never done this before? Was it new to him? It couldn’t be. He’d been with tarts. But it must be different for him, with her. How long would he be able to hold out? They had made love last night. He had had quite a bit to drink at lunch. It depended probably on her. He wouldn’t have the same control over himself as he had when he was making love himself. With her left hand she stroked his stomach, running her fingertips over it. He was beginning to stir and tremble, to heave his haunches. He was breathing fast. Should she hurry? Yes, better hurry if she could. His hands were in her hair. He was trying to lift her head, to raise her to his level on the pillows so that he could take control. But she would not let him. She was resolved to follow her experiment to the close. She might never have such a chance of watching it again. She quickened the pace, the tempo of her voracious lips. She was conscious of a throbbing tautness; now, now. It must be now. If it were she who was being made love to, she would close her eyes. Not this time though. She could watch from the first explosion to the final spasm, conscious, acutely conscious of the last shuddering sigh.
She knelt, her chin rested on his stomach, brooding peacefully. Then she lifted her head, drew away from him, stood up, moved to the head of the bed, looked down on him. Their eyes met. In his there was an expression of adoring gratitude. She put the palm of her hand upon his forehead. The skin was damp. She lay down beside him. He put his arm around her shoulders, holding her close. He said nothing: there was no need for words. They were utterly at one.
The aircraft tilted on its side. The No Smoking sign flashed on. ‘Fasten your seat belts please.’ She jerked her chair into an upright position. Below her she could see the Thames, and the proud bastions of Windsor Castle. This was the moment she had dreaded, the passage through Customs. They said that Customs officers could always spot the passenger who was concealing something. Years of training had taught them to detect a way of walking, an over-confidence, or a furtiveness. Something that seemed unnatural or exaggerated. She had put the Valentina package in her airline night bag. She would display that right away; no attempt at concealment. It was so very obvious. It took up nearly all the room there was. Victor had grumbled at first. Then he had made a joke of it. He had over-played his joke, or at least to her he had. When they reached Istanbul, he had adjured Kitty to keep his wife away from sweetshops. ‘If she buys chocolates in Lebanon, she’ll go mad over Turkish Delight. I went mad over it as a schoolboy. Didn’t you, Kitty?’
As the bulk of his own purchases had increased, he had grown impatient with her chocolates. ‘Let’s open the box and eat them now,’ he said.
‘But it’s a present.’
‘Who for?’
‘That’s my secret.’
‘Why can’t you take off the wrapping, buy some chocolates in London, then fix that Lebanese wrapping on it?’
‘Because…’
She was exasperated by his persistence, but she could see his point. Why should she have bought chocolates in the Lebanon; with all the trinkets that there were to buy there, why choose chocolates? And if she had been going to buy a present, why hadn’t she thought first for whom it was intended? Thank heavens she had had the sense not to say ‘The au pair girls.’ If she had, and she so easily could have done, he would have carried his joke into the nursery. He would have been certain to say, ‘Now let me see by what manner of sweets I have had my travelling plans upset.’
As it was he would insist on knowing who the sweets had gone to. That would mean her having to buy some chocolates in London and send them to somebody whom Victor scarcely knew. ‘Ah, what a tangled web we weave …’
There was inevitably always some factor you had not foreseen. This had become hers. The final test now lay ahead. What would crop up at the last moment? Something would, something always did. What would it be?
She looked at her watch. Ten past three. Within an hour it would all be over. By the time the hour hand had passed the four, she would be on her way to the airport bus. An hour what a little time that was. She looked back an hour. At ten minutes past two she was finishing her lunch, sipping a dutyfree cognac; that only seemed a minute or two ago. She had barely finished her cognac when the ‘Fasten your seat belts’ sign had flashed in front of her. How swiftly she had lived through that hour. In an hour’s time she would be looking back to this moment thinking, What was I making all that fuss about? How quickly that hour went.
Would it though? Might she not have been taken into a small back room for cross-examination, a cross-examination that would be the curtain to Victor’s whole career? The very thing she had striven to avoid when she undertook this mad assignment. She closed her eyes. Why did I ever do it? Why, oh why, oh why? If I get through this next hour safely, never again, never, never.
She was standing inside the Customs shed, waiting for the number of her flight to be announced. Her airline bag was on the floor beside her. If Victor makes one more joke about those chocolates I’ll scream, she thought. There was the strident but garbled voice of the announcer. ‘Flight—’ she couldn’t catch the number. What was their number, when it came to that? Victor nudged her. ‘Come on now, this is us.’ They moved into the big hall. She saw the accumulated, variegated, many-coloured collection of suitcases with which she had grown familiar during the last three weeks on this and the other pavement, in that and the other hotel lobby. Victor was onto their two suitcases quickly. He was in a bustling mood. ‘Got your keys?’ he asked her. ‘Fine.’
He had his and her case open. ‘Yes,’ he was telling the inspector, ‘we’ve got several things. I’ve bought some Damascene brocade; we’ve got between us a bottle of whisky and four hundred cigarettes. My wife, will you believe it, bought chocolates in Beirut. Chocolates from the Lebanon, I ask you. You’ve got that in your airline satchel, haven’t you? Show it to the inspector. Then I got some silk shirts in Istanbul. Here’s a list of what I bought and spent. What else did you get, Myra? Oh of course, that leather writing case from Tunis. Have you your list? Here it is, Inspector. I’ll settle the duty on it all. A wife’s dividend on a holiday; I don’t suppose it’ll be a lot.’
He had gone over to the desk with his cheque-book. In three minutes he was back. ‘Only seven pounds, three and threepence. Not much really. Now we’re through. With any luck we’ll be in Hampstead by six o’clock.’
We’re through. Had he any conception of what that meant, to her, of what it was that she was through? It had been so simple. Why had she been worried? How effortlessly he had taken control of everything. They were through. It was over. The nightmare was at an end. Never again, she vowed, never, never again. Yet even as she vowed it, she was forced to think, But how could I have helped it? Where did I go wrong? One tiling led to the next. If I had it all to do again, what would I not do that I did, what would
I do that I omitted? She couldn’t see where she had been at fault.
The coach swung to the right, eastwards towards London. Two hours and she’d be home. There’d be the children and the au pair girls to welcome her. She had her revolting package. In a day or two the telephone would ring and she’d hand the package over, receiving that tape in return. The chapter would be closed. Never to be reopened. She sighed. She had had a bad time and it was over now. Yet even so, as there was to everything, there was a credit balance. Did she regret those three days’ dalliance in Malta? Wasn’t her marriage on a sounder, deeper base because of them? Hadn’t she learned something about herself that might be useful later? Hadn’t she been brought much closer to her husband? They had been settling into a rut, she and Victor. They had been shaken out of that rut now. Her husband had become a different person to her; she must have become a different person to him. Had she had an affair with that South African—as so well she might—new doors would have been opened to her. He would have been probably a dashing and imaginative lover. And when those three days were over, she would have thought, If one man can teach me so much, what might not another do? She would have been encouraged to experiment. She knew herself, or rather, she was beginning to know herself. Her curiosity would have led her to accept each new opportunity. Her relations with Victor would inevitably have become increasingly tepid, a routine exchange that would have left Victor vulnerable to any fresh temptation, as he already had proved himself to be … if those suspicions about the Brompton Road were justified. And from what she had learned of Victor during these two months, he could not be blamed if he had gone elsewhere for what he could not get at home.