She could feel him moving towards her; could sense his face looming up in front of hers, and imperceptibly, she tilted her face towards his and very slightly parted her lips. Nothing happened, and for a second she thought she might have been completely mistaken. Perhaps Marcus had got up to check for Ginny again; perhaps he’d even left the room.
But then, suddenly, with no warning, she felt a strange pair of lips landing roughly on hers, and a hand cupping her cheek, and the exhilarating, shocking sensation of a warm, sweet, utterly unfamiliar mouth opening up and exploring her own. For a few delicious, seemingly endless moments, she responded blindly and pleasurably to his kiss; her mind blank and her body tense with delight.
His hands began to move down her body, and she began to shiver with pleasure. But the more his hands moved, the more her stupor faded, giving way to a hard, cold feeling of misgiving.
‘Actually,’ she murmured, as a hand began to circle her right breast; ‘actually . . .’ The hand stopped. Liz opened her eyes. She was looking at Marcus’s left ear.
‘Is something wrong?’ he whispered. His breath was hot and moist against her neck, and suddenly Liz felt constricted. She struggled out of his grasp, and leant back against the wall, with a damp patch cooling beneath her ear and her hair uncomfortably askew.
‘No, nothing’s wrong,’ she said, and had a sudden desire to giggle. She looked at Marcus. He was panting slightly, and looked concerned. ‘It’s just that, I don’t know . . .’ She made a helpless gesture with her hands. ‘I just feel a bit strange, doing this. Apprehensive.’
‘Don’t be.’ Marcus spoke firmly. ‘We’re not hurting anyone. You mustn’t feel guilty.’ He spoke almost as though he was trying to convince himself. Liz thought about this for a few moments.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I do. Feel guilty, that is. I think I deserve this.’
‘Well then.’ Marcus bent his face over hers again, and Liz moved to meet his mouth eagerly. His hand found its way beneath her jersey, unzipped the top of her skirt and began to finger the top of her tights. Liz gasped, and sat bolt upright.
‘I’m sorry,’ she panted. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ She gave a frustrated wriggle. ‘Everyone else seems to do this with no effort at all. You know, suddenly we found ourselves making love.’ She swallowed and pushed her hair back. ‘I don’t think I could ever just find myself making love. I think I’d have to decide to do it. And . . .’ Marcus gazed at her with an impatience tempered by curiosity.
‘What’s wrong? Is it this room?’ Liz shrugged hopelessly.
‘Maybe. I think it’s more the thought of you seeing what I’m really like. Under all this.’ She tweaked her jersey disparagingly. ‘I bet you’re used to women with perfect bodies. Not all droopy like mine.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Marcus. His mind flicked abstractly to Anthea’s slim figure; her small, well-shaped breasts, her smooth, pale skin and elfin shoulders. Making love to her was making love to a thing of beauty; an aesthetic experience as much as a sexual one.
‘I wasn’t exactly expecting to be seduced this afternoon,’ Liz was saying. ‘I expect I’ve got my grottiest bra on.’
Marcus stared at her, mesmerized. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted to undress her, there, down to her old bra, and no doubt unglamorous knickers. He wanted to cup the pendulous, ripe curves of her breasts, and run his hands over the folds of her stomach, and bury himself inside her.
‘I don’t give a fuck what you’re wearing,’ he said, in a voice husky with desire. ‘I’ve just got to have you.’ Liz stared back at him, her eyes wide, her breath coming quickly, a delicious anticipation rising inside her.
‘Hello! Is anyone there?’ A cheerful female voice calling from outside broke the silence, followed by the sound of the doorbell. Marcus and Liz stared at each other for an agonized second. Then Marcus spoke, in a hissed, angry whisper.
‘Fuck it! It’s Ginny.’ He struggled to his feet, and smoothed back his hair. Liz felt like crying. Marcus strode to the window and leant out.
‘Hello there! We’ve been waiting inside.’
‘Marcus, I’m so sorry! Is Mrs Chambers still there? Have you been waiting long. I can’t believe how late I am!’
‘No problem,’ replied Marcus slowly, as he retreated inside.
He looked at Liz, pushing his hand back through his hair in shaky disbelief. ‘We’d better go and let her in,’ he said.
‘Oh God,’ said Liz. She pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks. ‘Am I looking very red?’
‘No,’ began Marcus. ‘Well actually, yes. You are a bit.’ He grinned wickedly at her, and Liz’s legs started to feel shaky again.
‘I can’t get in! The door’s closed!’ It was Ginny’s voice, wafting up to them from outside.
‘I’ll go,’ said Marcus quickly to Liz. ‘You come down when you’re ready.’
‘No!’ said Liz. ‘That’ll look really obvious.’ She smoothed down her skirt. ‘We’d better go down together.’
As Marcus opened the front door, Ginny burst through like a puppy ready for a walk. She kissed Marcus on both cheeks, and smiled in a charming, shamefaced manner at Liz.
‘Mrs Chambers, I’m so sorry! Oh my goodness, you must be freezing, waiting here so long!’
‘Oh no,’ said Liz gaily. She felt dishevelled beside this glossy girl. ‘We had a bottle of champagne to keep us going,’ she added, foolishly.
‘Really?’ Ginny looked from Liz to Marcus with bright eyes. ‘How nice! Is there any left?’
‘Sorry,’ said Liz. ‘It’s all gone.’ She gave a sudden giggle, and Marcus quickly took Ginny by the arm.
‘We always give our clients a bottle of champagne when a deal goes through,’ he said firmly.
‘Yes, I knew that,’ said Ginny, eyes sparkling. ‘But I didn’t realize you always drank it straightaway.’
‘We don’t normally,’ said Marcus tetchily. Ginny looked at him, and back at Liz. She gave a little grin.
‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you do.’
CHAPTER SIX
On the third Saturday in October, Ginny and Piers collected the keys to twelve Russell Street, and supervised the arrival of the removal van containing their things. It took an hour to unload the futon, the kilims, the huge wrought-iron candlesticks, the chests full of clothes, CDs, pictures, and books. Then, leaving everything piled up in the sitting-room, they locked the door and went off to Wales for a week, where Piers was filming a tiny part in an obscure children’s fantasy drama.
By the next Saturday, Alice still hadn’t noticed anything different. She had pared down the route from the school gate to the door of the garage to an efficient minimum, and, with her Walkman pounding loudly in her ears, she rarely looked right or left. She would have had to peer hard in at the window of the sitting-room in order to see the pile of boxes on the floor; the rolled-up rugs against the fireplace. And, despite having been told the good news by her parents, it had not actually registered with her that the house had been let out. Conversations at home about the tenants moving in had passed as effortlessly over her head as did the morning radio news bulletins which her parents put on every breakfast so that she would grow up aware of current events.
The garage was quite cosy now. She’d bought a couple of cushions from a charity shop and put them in the corner, and she’d taken the spare torch from home and rigged it up on a shelf so it was almost like a lamp. There wasn’t a heater in the garage, and it was getting colder and colder in there as the weeks went on. But just sitting there, listening to music and smoking and munching on sweets and sometimes trying to read a magazine, she felt a strange happiness; an obscure sense of achievement.
As soon as she had pulled the door behind her, she took out a Marlboro from the packet in her top pocket, pulled out her lighter with her other hand and flicked the tiny flame alive in a familiar, instinctive action. She’d got into the habit of always lighting up before she sat down. It was alm
ost a matter of principle; a superstitious routine.
And coming to the garage was also a routine. She was there nearly every day now, usually between school and supper. Her parents sometimes asked what she’d been doing, but not in the sort of way that meant they really wanted to know. The only time she’d bothered to come up with a convincing story, her mother had interrupted her when she was still speaking, to say something boring about the tutorial college.
The tutorial college. Alice’s train of thought paused scathingly; she was even less cheerful about it now than she had been when they moved in. And now it wasn’t just that they had to live in a grotty little flat. The week before, she had arrived back for supper to see a girl she knew from school coming out of the front door. They’d given each other a dismayed smile, and said Hi, and then Alice had blushed bright red and rushed past, up the stairs to the flat.
‘What was Camilla Worthing doing here?’ she’d demanded of her mother, who was sitting on the sofa in the sitting-room, staring blankly at the television.
‘Camilla Worthing? Oh yes, extra coaching for her Maths GCSE. She must have stayed late.’
‘Extra coaching?’ A thumping sense of panic began to fill Alice’s chest. ‘What, like, after school?’
‘Yes, of course after school,’ said Liz shortly. ‘We haven’t gone quite so far as to poach pupils from their school lessons.’ Alice wasn’t listening.
‘Do lots of people come? For extra coaching?’ she said.
‘Not yet,’ said Liz. ‘It’s a bit early in the year. But they will. At least, we hope they will. A few have put their names down for next term.’
‘From my school?’
‘Some, yes.’
‘And what about next year?’
‘What about it?’
‘Will you do GCSE coaching then?’
‘Of course we will.’ Liz changed channel, and the title music of Summer Street blared out of the television.
‘But I’m doing GCSEs next year!’ wailed Alice. ‘It’ll be people in my year coming. It’ll be so embarrassing.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Liz brusquely.
‘But I’ll see them coming here! It’ll be awful!’
‘Oh for Heaven’s sake, Alice! Grow up!’
Grow up, they said. Be more mature. Alice stared resentfully into the darkness of the garage. They said all that, and then they treated her like a child. Just that afternoon, she’d had to spend hours and hours trailing around Silchester with her father, putting leaflets through doors. As if she didn’t have anything else to do.
Her father was an active member of ECO, a local environmental society, and Alice was a junior member. That didn’t amount to much, since she refused to attend the weekly meetings. But it somehow went without saying that she always helped her father when there were leaflets to give out. She didn’t usually mind doing it; didn’t mind walking in companionable silence round the outskirts of Silchester, always trying to finish her side of the street before he finished his without looking as though she was making an effort. And her mother always bought something nice for tea, as a reward.
But today she’d felt scratchy and put-upon. They shouldn’t just assume she was free to do things like this; they should ask her first; they should be grateful. They didn’t treat her like a proper human being. She’d shuffled blackly along the streets, kicking the leaves with the toes of her Doc Martens, shoving the leaflets grumpily into letterboxes. And she’d averted her eyes from the words on the front of the leaflets; unwilling to show any interest in the subject, even by accident. It was all about the awful Christmas environment parade, that happened every year. If they tried to make her go on that again, they really had to be joking.
They’d finished up in the furthermost reaches of West Silchester, each with two empty carrier bags and a list of streets ticked off and a collection of rubber bands which had gone round the bundles of leaflets.
‘Good work, Carruthers,’ said Jonathan, which was what he said every time. ‘Now let’s get back to headquarters for hot chocolate and rations.’ Alice twitched in annoyance.
‘Actually,’ she said, before she could think about it, ‘I’ve got to get some things. I’ll see you later.’
‘Oh.’ He sounded taken aback, and Alice felt a pouring sensation of guilt and irritation at herself. So what if they traditionally went back home for a huge tea after the leaflets? It wasn’t such a big deal. She felt a pinkness in her cheeks; an imminent embarrassment; the sort she used to have at school whenever she was about to put up her hand.
‘See you at home,’ she muttered, beginning to walk off.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Jonathan. ‘Well, thank you, darling. You were a big help.’
Alice pretended not to hear, and strode off before her father could ask what she needed to get or suggest coming along with her. It was almost worse being praised for doing something than actually having to do it.
She’d arrived at Russell Street in a few minutes, and gone straight into the garage. Now she looked around, exhaling a cloud of smoke, waiting for her customary feeling of satisfaction. But the garage seemed even colder today than it normally did. As she sat down dolefully on the cushions, staring out through the crack in the door at the darkening sky, she felt a strange sense of gloom come over her. She’d been so anxious to get here; so anxious not to go home with her father. But now . . . it wasn’t so great. She looked at her watch. Ten to six. She pulled her jacket around her, and sat rigid, staring sternly ahead. She would stay for another twenty minutes, she promised herself. And she would have two more cigarettes. And then she would go.
Ginny, Piers, and Duncan arrived back at twelve Russell Street at six o’clock. After a morning spent unpacking and arranging, they had gone into Silchester to get some food and look around. Duncan had insisted on buying a long list of exotic ingredients for that evening’s supper, which had inevitably meant trekking about until they eventually found a delicatessen, which was about to close. It had taken all his persuasive powers to get them an extension of ten minutes, during which he asked for brands which the salesgirl had never heard of and fingered packets and bottles with an air of slight disappointment.
‘Well, if this is the provinces . . .’ he said expressively, as they came up the garden path. ‘I mean, their range of olive oils was pitiful.’
‘Duncan,’ said Ginny threateningly. ‘Piers, have you got the key?’
‘I know, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s all lovely. I’m going to adore it here.’
It had been Piers who suggested Duncan should rent a room from them in Silchester for a while. After all, his lease in Fulham was coming to an end; he didn’t have any work; they could do with the money. Duncan had stood in the kitchen, not quite hiding, while Piers threw these arguments at Ginny. She was tired, she’d just come home from work and she had wet feet from the rain. She’d agreed without really taking in what was being said.
Now she stood, and looked appraisingly at Duncan waiting on the path.
‘You’re not going to be trouble, are you?’ she said.
‘Trouble? What kind of trouble?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him sideways, affection not entirely masking a growing suspicion. ‘Just remember, you’re on probation.’
‘Oh yes, I know. I’m going to be good, I promise.’ He paused. ‘By the way,’ he added casually, ‘I asked Ian Everitt over tonight. As a sort of housewarming.’
‘Duncan! You didn’t!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Duncan!’
Alice heard raised voices from inside the garage, and cautiously went to the door. She opened it enough to poke her head out, and looked carefully round the corner. At first she couldn’t hear anything, and thought it must just have been people on the street. But as she was drawing her head back inside the garage, she heard, with a stab of recognition, the familiar groaning sound of the front door shutting.
Her immediate thought was that it must be burglars, and she had
a sudden vision of being discovered in the garage, beaten up and dragged off to her death. She would be on the telly. Silchester mourns for tragic Alice. For a few seconds, she stood still, transfixed by the idea of her sad face peering out of the screen into all her friends’ living rooms.
Then the kitchen light went on. It couldn’t be burglars. It must be . . . it must be . . . She stood still, frowning, her hand on the door. And then it came to her. The tenants. She paused abruptly in her thoughts, amazed at her powers of deduction. The tenants. It was a phrase which had buzzed around at home for the last few weeks, and she had taken it in at the shallowest level, without bothering to digest what it really meant. But now various phrases and conversations between her parents began to swim belatedly into her memory. And now she realized, for the first time, exactly what they’d been talking about.
Her heart began to thud. If other people lived in their house now, perhaps she was trespassing. She quickly looked out of the door again, at the lit-up kitchen. A hand appeared at the window, turning on the tap. A kettle was thrust under it. Then the hand disappeared. Alice counted to ten, then put one foot outside the door. Then her other foot. She made her way slowly along the wall of the garage, moving sideways with one stealthy foot over another.
As she reached the front garden she paused. The sitting-room was lit up, and she was suddenly filled with curiosity to see other people’s stuff in it. But as she edged cautiously towards the window, a man came into the room. She gasped, and retreated, feverishly concocting a story in her mind. But he was shouting something out of the door; his attention was away from the window. She had to go now, before they all came into the room and she was stuck there. Without looking back, she ran quickly and lightly over the lawn, down the path, fiddled furiously with the gate for a second, and then was safely outside, on the innocuous pavement. She quickly walked a few paces along for good measure, then risked a backward look. She couldn’t see anyone. They hadn’t seen her. She was OK.
A Desirable Residence Page 9