AN Outrageous Affair

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said, taking out his cigarette case, fishing in his pocket for his gold lighter, ‘I never got into that. The cattle call culture. Professional suicide. Now, Miss Hunterton, it’s late, nearly twelve, I must take you home. I do hope this hasn’t been too boring. I expect you spend most evenings at the Saddle Room and the Ad Lib, with groovy young men.’

  Chloe shuddered. ‘No, I don’t. Honestly. And I’ve loved this evening, every minute of it.’

  ‘Good. Let me drive you home and you can talk for a little bit for a change. I want to hear about your horrible brothers and your unhappy childhood. I presume it was unhappy, most people of any note seem to have unhappy childhoods these days.’ As the car pulled up outside Joe’s flat, he leant over and kissed her gently on the mouth. ‘You impress me you know,’ he said. ‘You impress me very much. I think you’re lovely.’

  Chloe was quite unable to think of anything to say.

  When she got in, Joe was waiting, sitting at the table, struggling with an article. He hadn’t been there when she went out; he looked her over in her black crepe dress, her piled-up hair, her double lashes and smiled. ‘Wow,’ he said, ‘you look amazing. Who’s the poor unfortunate sucker?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Chloe loftily and some instinct told her to keep the identity of the sucker to herself. Joe would not like it, she knew, in the very least. And she wanted to think about the evening, to savour it, to savour the kiss, the fact that Piers had told her she was lovely, to explore the way she felt about him, to examine the sensations that were flooding her, flooding her emotions, her body, her very self. She smiled at Joe, kissed him on the top of his head and went straight into the bathroom, and thence to bed. She lay for a long time, staring into the darkness, listening to Joe’s typewriter, wondering what was happening to her and where it would end; she awoke in the night, hot, restless, and found, half ashamed, half amused, that one of her hands was cupping her own breast and the other was moving with a gentle insistence in the moist tenderness between her legs.

  Joe was waiting for her when she came in the next evening, with a face like thunder. ‘Chloe, did you really go out with Piers Windsor last night?’

  Chloe met his eyes with a coolness that surprised her. ‘Yes I did. How do you know?’

  ‘He just rang.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see what it’s got to do with you. Did he –’ (now, Chloe, sound casual, don’t give anything away) ‘did he leave a message?’

  ‘Yes, to ring him. Chloe, what on earth is this about? Why did you go out with him?’

  ‘Joe, because he asked me, that’s what it’s about.’

  ‘Oh, really? And you go out with everyone who asks you, do you?’

  ‘If I want to, yes.’

  ‘Chloe, the man is –’ Joe stopped abruptly.

  ‘Yes?’ said Chloe. ‘The man is what?’

  ‘Oh – totally unsuitable. I just don’t understand you. Understand any of it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to understand,’ said Chloe, ‘and I don’t see why he’s so unsuitable either. I think he’s lovely.’

  Well that had been a mistake, that sweet, naïve word. She should have said something sophisticated, like Piers was charming, or delightful, or amusing: not lovely.

  ‘Whatever else Piers Windsor may be,’ said Joe, ‘he is not lovely. He’s devious, smooth, manipulative –’

  ‘Joe, don’t be ridiculous,’ said Chloe. ‘He’s none of those things. He’s been extremely good to me. And I like him very much and I shall go out with him if I want to. I don’t see what it has to do with you.’

  ‘Chloe, please don’t,’ said Joe and she was quite startled by how upset he seemed. ‘I do assure you there is no way it is going to bring you any happiness whatsoever. And it has a great deal to do with me. I care about you very much.’

  ‘Then you should do me the kindness of acknowledging that I am actually an adult, Joe, and able to make simple judgements like who I go out with myself.’

  ‘Are you going to see him again?’ said Joe, pushing his hair back in a particularly wild gesture.

  ‘Yes, I probably am. Don’t look like that, Joe. I’m only going out with him, I’m not going to marry him.’

  Two weeks later Piers took her to bed. He had seen her almost every night since the first dinner at the Ritz; he cancelled all but the most pressing engagements, and turned his rather intense energies on her. She was genuinely baffled by his attention, his apparent obsession with her.

  Infinitely easy to please, she enjoyed everything. He took her to the theatre: The Odd Couple and Half a Sixpence; to the cinema: The Ipcress File and the new James Bond, Thunderball; he took her out to ever more beautiful restaurants, to Inigo Jones and the Arethusa, and the Caprice; he drove her out to his house in Berkshire on Sunday and showed her his horses: thoroughbreds, which he was just starting to race, and even offered to allow her to ride one of the smaller ones round the track but she refused with such vehemence that he laughed and said it was all right, it wasn’t compulsory.

  She was swept along on the tide of Piers’s romanticism; any doubts she might have had in the beginning about her feelings for him, whether they were genuine love, or merely infatuation, gratitude, an acute sense of flattery, faded in the brilliance of his courtship: flowers, presents, poems read in his beautiful voice to her over the phone, anniversaries remembered (four weeks ago today since you did the lunch for me, a fortnight since we first went to tea, exactly a week since you told me you thought you might love me) – it was all too much for her; irresistible, irreversible, she tumbled, rushed, fell over into love.

  The strange intensity that her accident had brought to their early relationship, the mingling of her pain and his concern, her suffering and his tenderness had undoubtedly accelerated their affair. They had learnt much of one another very fast, had confronted raw emotion together; weeks, months of more easy contact had been accomplished in as many hours.

  But that had only been the beginning; she had travelled far since then. For the first time in her entire life, she felt valued, important, strong; she was happy, joyful, and filled with pleasure. It was heady stuff. She gave no thought to the end of the thing: clearly an ending there would be, and it would be painful and dreadful, but in the meantime every day was a new delight and nothing, not Joe’s increasing and patent disapproval, not her mother’s cool questioning about ‘this man’, not even the anxiety of any of her friends who knew of her affair, could disturb her.

  She could see why they were all worried, but it amused, rather than concerned her, that they should all assume that she was so foolish, so blind, so naïve that she could see no dangers in the situation herself.

  She could see them all clearly, horribly clearly: Piers’s age, her own age, his sophistication, the life he led, the people he knew, spent his life with, famous, glittering, household names; all these would be terrible, insurmountable barriers to her happiness. But as she clearly had no need to climb the barriers, as this was a finite thing, she gave them little thought. She was with Piers, for a limited time; she was not part of his life, his difficult, grown-up life, she had no need to be, she was living out a fantasy that he had created, and she was enjoying every possible moment of it.

  ‘I’m only going out with him,’ she kept saying, laughing at their worried disapproval. ‘I’m not going to marry him.’

  He seemed to her to be quite rich; indeed he acknowledged that he was. ‘I did what everyone tells you not to do, and put some of my own money into various productions. Everyone, happily, has turned out to be wrong.’

  He had what he called a small flat in London, in Sloane Street; it seemed quite large to Chloe, and was furnished in a rather bland, although clearly expensive style, with a great deal of antique furniture, pale beige carpets, which Chloe was so frightened of spilling things on she refused to tak
e so much as a cup of tea out of the glittering white kitchen, and a great many extremely modern-looking paintings all over the white walls. There were also, on every surface, photographs of famous people, either with Piers (including the Queen, shaking his hand at a première) or on their own and signed in a variety of theatrical excessiveness, ranging from ‘Darling Piers with best love Vivien and Larry’ to ‘Piers, me old mate’, from Michael Caine. Chloe would walk round and round studying these with ever-increasing awe; how anyone who had clearly been on (at the very least) friendly terms with Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Asher (currently going out with Paul McCartney) and Hayley and Juliet Mills could possibly want to spend so much time with her was completely beyond her comprehension.

  Then there was the country house, in Berkshire, Stebbings Hall, more personal, and a great deal more beautiful, a perfect example of the classic Georgian country house, furnished and decorated with sympathetic and flawless taste; there were fewer of the photographs there, and the walls were hung with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century paintings. There was a small cinema at Stebbings; Chloe begged to be allowed to see at least one of Piers’s films and, protesting and laughing, he put Kiss and Don’t Tell on for her and she sat watching it in total awe. ‘You’re so good,’ she kept saying. ‘You’re so good. I can’t believe it’s you and I know you.’

  Piers kissed her at the end, and told her she was obviously just saying it, that he was hammy as hell in it, but she insisted that she thought he was wonderful, and even wanted to see it again.

  He had been, ever since the first night, reticent about his personal life. He assured her that there was very little more about him to know, that he had told her everything, and when she asked about other women, other relationships, he said vaguely that there had been several, a few of them quite long term, but none of them remotely important. ‘I told you, I haven’t risked myself again.’

  She believed it because she wanted to; but she was aware there was some effort involved. The light easy charm that lay on the surface of him concealed, as she had swiftly discovered, an intensity, a capacity for darker, more brooding passions that did not seem entirely compatible with a harmonious emotional life. But it seemed something she could ignore, discard almost; her concern with Piers Windsor being so ephemeral, so almost unreal. All that mattered was what he wished her to see, what he presented to her; and that was all she wished to see also.

  And then, after the two weeks, and one particularly joyful evening, after dinner at the Ritz again (‘Because it is our anniversary,’ he said, smiling at her), he looked at her over his brandy and said, ‘Chloe, would you like to come back to the flat now? It isn’t very late.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her brown eyes meeting his in an odd mixture of pleasure and bravado. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much.’

  She had thought a great deal about this: had alternately longed for and dreaded it. She was a virgin and he clearly knew she was a virgin, but that didn’t stop her being apprehensive, embarrassed. He had been kissing her a great deal; and he had been caressing her, her breasts, her thighs, her buttocks. Chloe liked that; and she was relieved to find she liked it. Knowing she was not overtly sexy, she had been worried that she might be actually frigid; but if the shafts of delight that went through her body when Piers’s hands were on her meant anything at all, they had to mean she was at least not that. She was silent going along in the car; it was a pale grey Rolls-Royce (which Joe Payton had remarked, with a stinging accuracy, exactly matched Piers’s eyes), driven by a uniformed chauffeur, and she found it inhibiting whenever she was in it, but now she was nervous, not merely of what was to happen to her, but of how she would feel, and how she was going to conduct herself. Just what was she meant to do, she wondered; how much should she move, respond? And would it hurt? She had heard so many times that it did, and she wasn’t exactly afraid of it being painful, but she couldn’t see how she was going to be a very rewarding partner. She looked at him, as he sat beside her, his profile rather serious, and felt so apprehensive that she almost thought of ducking out even now. She could always say she had suddenly got the curse; or she felt sick; or simply that she had changed her mind. He was so indulgent towards her, so apparently pleased by everything she did that she was sure he would forgive her, take her home and deliver her on her doorstep as usual.

  But no. She wanted to go to bed with him because she loved him, she loved him absolutely, she would quite literally have died for him. In the two weeks they had been together he had not once done anything, anything at all, that she had not liked. And she wanted him to be her lover, so that their affair was complete. It couldn’t be going to last much longer, he would tire of her soon, go off with one or other of the infinitely beautiful and sophisticated women he knew, and she had to see it as gloriously to its end as she could. And lose her virginity in what would at the very least be style. She just had to be a bit brave, that was all. A bit brave and very relaxed. She sat back, taking deep breaths. She would be all right. Of course she would.

  The first thing that happened was that she broke something. A glass by his bed, a cut-glass tumbler, set there with a bottle of Glenfiddich malt whisky and a carafe of water. She had been fiddling about, looking at the books on the table, trying to appear nonchalant, and it had gone, knocking against the table as it went and cracking right through. Just like that. Piers came in from taking a phone call in his dressing room to find her on her hands and knees in tears, looking at it.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘now what have you broken?’

  ‘Your glass,’ she said, great tears forming in her eyes, ‘I’m so terribly terribly sorry.’

  ‘I’m not. It doesn’t matter. How many more times do I have to tell you, I like your clumsiness. You’re like a puppy, and I like puppies.’

  ‘I don’t want to be like a puppy,’ said Chloe, slightly indignant. ‘I want to be like a – a sleek, exotic cat. That never knocked things over.’

  ‘Well, you’re not and I’m glad you’re not. Now dry your eyes, and wait there, I’m going to get some champagne for you and another glass for me, so we are both as relaxed as we can be. All right?’

  Chloe nodded forlornly. ‘All right.’

  While he was gone, she looked round the room; she had not properly taken it in before. It was rather less spartan than the rest of the flat; in fact had she not known (or hoped she knew) that there was no Mrs Windsor, she might have assumed there was. The walls were covered in beigey-pink silk, the carpet was white, the curtains and the cover on the bed a purple and pink William Morris pattern. There was also, just off the room, his dressing room; she looked in it and had to make a huge effort to keep silent. It was like a clothes shop: all open, instantly visible, the cupboards with sliding doors, most of them open, showing rails of suits, jackets, trousers, dinner jackets, shirts stacked high on shelves one side of the room, sweaters on the other. There were four racks of shoes, three trouser presses, rows and rows of ties and belts. There was also a dressing-table with a great many bottles of cologne on it. Chloe, who had a classic country girl’s antipathy towards men who wore what Toby would have called pongs, told herself they were probably only for wearing on the stage – although she had noticed some strongish, though not disagreeable, scents emanating from Piers at times – withdrew from the dressing room quickly and returned to exploring the rest of the room.

  There was an antique desk in one window bay and a chair, and there was a chaise-longue in the other; the walls were covered not with the inevitable modern paintings but with nineteenth-century watercolours. It was a soft room, a gentle one; the pile of books on the bed intriguing too: Far from the Madding Crowd, Jane Eyre, and Rosemary’s Baby. Women’s books, as Joe would have said, all of them. She saw Piers’s own face staring at her from the cover of the Sunday Times magazine: that must contain Joe’s article, the one that had brought them together. Thinking of Joe (again), knowing what he would do and say if
he knew she was here, she turned away, and walked over to the window. She felt chilled and very lonely, all at once.

  ‘Now then,’ said Piers, coming through the door, smiling at her, oddly nervous himself, ‘now then, come and sit on the bed, and we will have a drink, and talk a little more. And if you like you can go straight home again. I promise I won’t keep you here against your will.’

  ‘All right,’ said Chloe.

  She sat on the bed, looking at him, sipping the champagne. He bent forward and kissed her, gently at first, then, as she responded, harder, his tongue seeking hers. He took the glass from her and laid her back on the quilt.

  ‘I don’t want you to be frightened,’ he said, ‘and I want you to know how I feel about you. I want you terribly. I think you are very beautiful, and I want to give you pleasure and make you happy. Because you’ve made me very happy, these last few weeks. Very happy. I cannot believe quite how happy I feel.’

  Chloe was silent, her eyes exploring his. He moved his hands and began to caress her breasts through her silk dress; she pushed them away, sat up, pulled it easily, quickly over her head. Underneath she had on a black slip; he slid it off her shoulders, kissing them, moving down, kissing the top of her breasts, and then licking them, working his tongue down, in the salty warmth of her cleavage, and then tenderly, teasingly, round her small rosy nipples, first one, then the other.

  Chloe closed her eyes; delicious sensations filled her, flooded her, she felt hot, liquid, alive. She flung out her arms, thrusting her breasts, her body at him; he pulled away from her briefly, looked at her expression and smiled.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said, ‘please don’t be frightened. I’ll look after you.’

  It was all over terribly quickly. One minute he was stroking her, kissing her, telling her he loved her; and almost the next, it seemed, she was lying there, feeling a little bleak (and rather sore) and oddly lonely again, all the warm and wonderful sensations gone, all their bright promise unfulfilled somehow, hearing his voice telling her how beautiful she was, kissing her, kissing her hair, her neck, her shoulders, thanking her, and promising her that next time, next time it would be as wonderful for her.