Reckless

by William Nicholson

  ‘There should be a few other people turning up,’ he said as they bowled down the straight road past the airport. ‘Quite a mixed bunch.’

  Pamela wanted very much to know if any of them were famous, without giving away that she had never in her life been in the company of famous people.

  ‘I hoped it was to be just you,’ she said. ‘I do find crowds boring.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll be bored.’

  After a while they turned off the main road and headed down a narrower road between trees. Then they passed through some grand gates, down a long private drive.

  ‘This is Bill Astor’s place,’ said Ward, gesturing at the woodland on either side. ‘The big house is up that way. We go down here.’

  He made a sharp turn to the left, and they drove deeper into the woods. In a little while the trees ended, and there was the river with a pleasure boat cruising slowly by. On its deck lounged two pretty young women drinking what might have been champagne. Both were wearing dark glasses and gazing impenetrably at the river bank as they churned by. Seeing them Pamela wished she had brought a pair of dark glasses.

  The Jaguar followed the track by the river for a little way, and pulled up at last beside a large cottage with steep roofs and high chimneys and leaded windows. Between the cottage and the river was a sloping garden bright with roses and irises.

  ‘Oh, it’s so pretty!’ Pamela exclaimed.

  ‘My hideaway,’ said Stephen Ward, escorting her to the door. ‘I love it here.’

  His hideaway. A romantic nook where he brought his women. He took her arm as he led her inside, and there was something about the pressure of his hand that told her he knew just what to do with women. He was slim and muscular and moved with grace. She wondered if he would try to kiss her, and what she would do if he did. Many boys and some men had made lunges at her in her young life so far, and she had become adept at evasion. One day, of course, she would not get away. She would be caught and kissed properly, and all the rest of it.

  The interior of the cottage was not glamorous. It was basically furnished, with worn and non-matching chairs. The rooms were heated by oil stoves. There was no phone or fridge. The kitchen seemed to be bare of food.

  ‘Everyone just mucks in here, as you see,’ said Ward, dropping his jacket on a chair. ‘What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? I can usually scrounge up a cup of coffee.’

  Saying this, he produced a sketch pad and a tin of pencils. Pamela realised with a shock that what she had taken as a ruse was in fact genuine. He was going to draw her portrait.

  He sat her outside on a low wall of rocks by a little stream that tumbled past bright blue campanulas to the river. The afternoon sun shone warm on her face as she posed, two hands crossed obediently in her lap. He worked quickly, squinting his eyes in concentration, looking from her face to his pad and back. She felt the unceasing intensity of his gaze but was unable to tell from it what he was thinking about her, if anything. She found this provoking.

  ‘So what have I done to deserve the honour of this invitation?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s not very gallant. You make it sound as if you picked me out at random.’

  ‘On impulse, let’s say.’

  He went on sketching. Pamela began to feel restless. She wondered what would be done about lunch.

  ‘When can I have a fag?’

  ‘Any time you like.’

  ‘When are all these other people coming?’

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  ‘Will they be fun? What if I don’t like them?’

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘if you feel yourself becoming bored, you have only to say the word and I’ll run you back to Hammersmith.’

  He was so relaxed about her presence that it bordered on indifference. Pamela thought that perhaps she was bored already. Perhaps she would ask him to take her home as soon as he was done with his sketching.

  ‘So do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Do you have a wife?’

  ‘Not anymore. I like my freedom too much.’

  ‘Oh, your freedom.’

  She meant her tone of voice to imply that she knew just what men meant by ‘freedom’.

  ‘I like to come and go as I please. I like to see who I please. Really I’m a collector of people. I love to meet people, and get to know them, and bring them together.’

  ‘Have you collected me?’

  ‘Of course. Here you are.’

  Pamela pouted at that. She didn’t want to be just another specimen in his collection.

  ‘You’re very beautiful.’ His voice was matter-of-fact. ‘Play your cards right and you could have any man you wanted.’

  ‘My cards?’

  ‘There are ways of doing these things. I can introduce you to some real prospects. What sort of chap are you looking for?’

  ‘Who said I was looking for anyone?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of a pretty girl if she doesn’t let some lucky fellow love her?’

  ‘I’m sure you know a great deal better than me.’

  He laid down his pencil and smiled at her, crinkling up his brown eyes.

  ‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said. ‘I’m on your side.’

  Before the portrait was done the other guests began rolling up. A small, very pretty, girl called Christine, who kissed Ward on the lips and called him ‘darling’. A broad-faced smiling man with a broken nose called Eugene, who Ward introduced as ‘our Russian spy.’ And a slender man called André, who was either Belgian or Dutch and had a sad but beautiful face. All the newcomers arrived with provisions of one sort or another. Eugene brought bottles of vodka. André brought wine. Christine had an entire shopping bag, out of which came fruit and vegetables, bread and pickles and chocolate.

  ‘Stephen never has anything in the house,’ she said. ‘If nobody feeds him, he just doesn’t eat.’

  They clustered round and admired Pamela’s portrait, taking her presence in the cottage for granted. Pamela now looked at the sketch herself. She saw the head and shoulders of a haughty sophisticated beauty who looked like a fashion model.

  ‘Good Lord!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that what I look like?’

  ‘Not one of my best efforts,’ said Stephen.

  Christine made decisions about who was to sleep in which bedroom.

  ‘Eugene, you’d better share the front room with André. Pamela can go in the little back room. Pamela, is there anyone in particular you’d like to sleep with?’

  Until this moment Pamela had not known she was staying the night.

  ‘Could I have Sean Connery, please?’

  This went down gratifyingly well.

  ‘I think I’d better share Stephen’s bed,’ said Christine. ‘He’s very well-behaved, unlike some.’

  ‘So you’ve decided to stay?’ Stephen said to Pamela.

  ‘I might,’ she said. ‘And I might not.’

  But she was starting to enjoy herself. Both of the new men were paying her attention, in their different ways. Eugene, the Russian spy, was open in his admiration.

  ‘Lovely, lovely,’ he said, pouring her a glass of vodka. ‘Stephen, how is it you know so many beautiful girls?’

  ‘Beautiful girls are the same as everyone else,’ said Stephen. ‘They want to make new friends. They want to have adventures.’

  ‘We have very beautiful girls in Russia,’ Eugene said.

  He then proposed a toast to his country.

  ‘The greatest country in the world, and the future of the world.’

  André smiled and shook his head.

  ‘Except you have to build a wall to keep your people in.’

  ‘Oh, the wall, the wall,’ said Eugene. ‘I don’t like walls. Don’t talk to me about the wall.’

  They sat together on the river front and watched the Saturday cruisers go by and smoked and drank Eugene’s vodka. André gazed at Pamela from time to time, but he d
id not speak to her. When he himself was speaking she watched his face, and caught the sadness in his limpid grey eyes, and wondered what he thought of her, and whether he found Christine more attractive. Christine was curled up with her head in Stephen’s lap, which implied that she belonged to Stephen.

  Eugene was boasting about the Soviet Union.

  ‘By 1970 we will be richer than the United States. That is a fact.’

  ‘Not the way you spend money,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Me! I am a man of modest means.’

  ‘You get your suits at Harrods.’

  ‘Of course!’ said Eugene. ‘I represent my country. I must dress well. Shirts and shoes from Barkers, suits and ties from Harrods, cologne from Christian Dior. But when we are victorious, when we have built true Communism, all this will wither away.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Eugene,’ said Stephen. ‘Do you actually believe the tosh you talk?’

  Eugene leapt to his feet.

  ‘I am Yevgeny Mikhailovich Ivanov, Captain Second Rank, descended on my mother’s side from the family Golenishchev-Kutuzov. My ancestor Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov defeated the Grande Armée of Napoleon in 1812. I am Russian and patriot, and if you insult me I will break your nose, as my nose was broken when I was middleweight squadron champion of the Pacific fleet!’

  He gave a mighty salute, and they all cheered. He sat down again, grinning, and poured everyone more vodka.

  ‘You’ll never build true Communism,’ said André. ‘America will never allow it. They’ll destroy Russia first.’

  ‘My friend,’ said Eugene, ‘that would be tragedy. All men of goodwill must combine to prevent. I tell my friend Stephen here, if the Germans gain access to nuclear weapons, the world is in great danger. The Americans must not supply nuclear warheads for their Pershing missiles in Germany.’

  Christine was up on her feet now.

  ‘Come on, Pamela,’ she said. ‘The men are going to be boring. Let’s take a walk.’

  They strolled together up and down the towpath, aware that the men’s eyes were following them. Pamela asked Christine how she came to know Stephen, and so learned that she had once worked as a showgirl at Murray’s club.

  ‘Were you a dancer?’

  ‘Oh, no, I can’t dance,’ said Christine. ‘I was one of the girls who just stands there. I can do standing still.’

  Standing still naked, thought Pamela. All the men’s eyes lingering over your body.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘It was all right. It gets boring very quickly, I can tell you. Perce pays well, nine pounds a week. But really it’s a chance to meet people, isn’t it?’

  A chance to meet people. What she meant was that men stared at your naked body and desired you, and later you went out with them.

  ‘Is Stephen your boyfriend?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Christine. ‘Stephen’s no bother at all in that way.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Pamela.

  She wondered if this meant that Stephen was homosexual. Christine evidently followed her thoughts.

  ‘He’s not queer or anything,’ she said. ‘He has this great story about when he was young and visiting Mexico. He and a friend went to a brothel and they picked a girl each, and Stephen went off into one of the rooms with his girl. Then she came running out to bang on all the other girls’ doors, shouting out, “Come and see Stephen’s pinga grande!”’

  ‘Good heavens!’

  ‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Christine. ‘He’s got a whopper.’

  Pamela smiled, as if such talk were familiar to her, but everything about Christine was a revelation. She was presumably what is referred to as a ‘loose woman’, but there was nothing sordid about her. She was pretty and friendly, funny and honest. It was quite plain that all the men adored her.

  ‘So do you have a boyfriend?’ Pamela asked her.

  ‘I think I’ve got several,’ said Christine. ‘Or maybe none. How about you?’

  ‘Definitely none.’

  A car drove up bringing a chauffeur with a note from Bill Astor.

  ‘Who’s for a swim?’ said Stephen. ‘Bill says I’m to bring some amusing people up to his pool.’

  They piled into the cars and drove through the woods to the biggest house Pamela had ever seen. The car deposited them by a door in a high brick wall, to the right of the palace. Here, set in a walled garden between lines of dark-green hedge, was a blue swimming pool. Conical yew trees stood at each corner, and at the far end there was a pillared circular pavilion.

  Pamela had not come prepared with a costume, and so assumed she would be among those who watched from the side. But all the others stripped to their underwear and jumped in.

  For a while she stood on the side feeling like a child who couldn’t swim, which wasn’t fair because she was a good swimmer. So when Christine called to her, ‘Come on in, it’s not cold!’ she slipped off her dress and joined them.

  The water was cold, at first at least, and rather shocked her. Then Eugene came up behind her and clasped his powerful arms round her and lifted her up out of the water. She screamed and he dropped her. André emerged from the water before her, sleek as a seal, and gazed at her for a moment. Then he slipped underwater again.

  A group of men in dinner jackets appeared on the poolside. Pamela failed to catch who any of them were, except for the stout figure of their host, Lord Astor. They were all middle-aged or older. They gazed with smiling longing at herself and Christine. Christine climbed out of the pool in her brassiere and knickers and talked to them as unselfconsciously as if she was fully dressed. Pamela too got out, and found a towel to drape round her shoulders, but it covered very little. One of the men from the big house party engaged her in conversation, speaking with a faint middle-European accident.

  ‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘I’d love a dip.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘I’m too old for that sort of thing. And then it would get into the papers, and there’d be a fuss.’

  ‘Are you someone famous, then?’ said Pamela, letting the towel slip open a little more.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But once, before the war, I was a king. Now I am an ex-king. I would like to see you privately. Will you give me your phone number?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have one,’ Pamela said.

  ‘If I was still king,’ he said sadly, ‘you would have a phone number.’

  Later they put their clothes back on and drove back to the cottage by the river. Night had now fallen. They all had another vodka and Stephen proposed a game of Ghosts.

  ‘It’s very easy. We spread out in the trees. Then you have to creep up on someone and give them a fright.’

  There was very little light between the trees, and the game quickly became genuinely scary. Pamela moved about, looking to all sides, and thought she saw someone, and then lost them again. So after a very short time she came to a stop by a big tree and stood and waited, trembling.

  All her senses were in a state of heightened alert. She felt she had never lived until now. She longed for someone to creep up on her and … and what?

  A sharp scream sounded from elsewhere in the woods, followed by soft laughter. Then came the crashing of running feet. She moved cautiously around the trunk of her protecting tree. Then she sensed there was someone behind her.

  ‘Beautiful ghost,’ said a voice.

  She turned round. It was André.

  He gazed at her, not moving. In the darkness it seemed possible to remain like this, looking, not speaking, caught in an intense stillness. She could barely make out his face.

  Then Eugene burst out of the trees, bellowing.

  ‘Boo! Boo!’

  Stephen could be heard calling them. And so the game ended, and one by one the guests made their way back to the cottage.

  Pamela hardly slept that night. She was on fire with excitement. She felt as if she had stepped out of one life and into another, a life that was more brightly lit, more intensely liv
ed. In this new life, she possessed power.

  Of course in the end it was all about sex. Pamela was not a fool. She understood that this was what all men wanted. But she herself had never had sex, nor had she yet felt anything she could identify as sexual desire, so the physical aspects remained remote to her. And yet her body trembled. Her skin glowed. She loved the sensation of men’s gaze on her body. She desired desire.

  Christine fascinated her. She imagined her standing naked in Murray’s club accepting the lustful gaze of strangers. What did that feel like? Pamela wriggled in her bed as she imagined herself on that stage. In her fantasy there was no sequinned G-string. She was entirely naked, and she was able to move. She strutted past the tables at which the rich, sophisticated men sat in silence, and their eyes devoured her, but not one of them was permitted to reach out and touch.

  Their eyes implored her, as André’s had done. What could she tell them? What were they to do for her? She had no answer. As yet she had too little experience, no experience at all. She knew only that some man, somehow, someday, would wake her from her trance of youth.

  ‘Make me love you,’ she said to her unknown lover. ‘Make me want to die for love.’

  *

  In the morning she came down late to find only Stephen up. He had made a pot of coffee, and was sitting in a silk bathrobe in the open doorway, drinking coffee and looking out at the river.

  ‘How is Miss Pamela this morning?’ he said.

  ‘Half awake,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t planning on staying the night. I didn’t bring any overnight things.’

  ‘So did you have to sleep in your birthday suit?’

  ‘Well, in my knickers.’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I shall get overexcited.’

  But he didn’t sound excited. He sounded languid. She poured herself a mug of coffee, pulled up a chair beside him, and lit herself a cigarette. She was realising what Christine had meant when she said Stephen was very well behaved. He was safe; for all his pinga grande.

  ‘Glad you came?’ he said.