‘So why didn’t you write to me?’
‘I don’t know. Why didn’t you write to me?’
‘I didn’t know where you were! And anyway –’
‘And anyway what, Hugh? Listen, I’m sorry I behaved like a shit when I was sixteen. All right?’ After a moment he had said, ‘I’ll write to you at Nina’s. I’ll ask you to invite me to the cottage – maybe we could hire the La Fillette again and go fishing.’
It was only when he was on the train that Hugh realised that La Fillette was the name of the boat on which Mick had been so seasick. He’d realised too that it had been their last holiday together. He and Bobby had been sixteen, close as brothers. A few months later Bobby had gone and he was telling himself it was unmanly to miss him so much.
Lying beside Nina in her bed, Hugh rolled on to his side to look at her. Asleep she looked younger, more like the innocent girl he imagined she was when Bobby first met her. She had told him she was seventeen when she first saw Bobby. She had told him she had fallen in love with him at once – because everyone did. Everyone did! She’d said it as though it was so patently obvious and unremarkable it amused her that he was so ignorant. He didn’t say that he was well aware of Bobby’s charm. He didn’t say that he thought Bobby had corrupted her. He wasn’t even sure why he thought this, except that there were times when she seemed too much like him; she possessed the same hard-edged independence he had, as though other people and their untidy feelings were nothing to them.
Nina stirred and opened her eyes. She frowned at him sleepily. ‘Hugh?’ She exhaled softly and he felt her warm breath on his face. ‘Hugh! I’d forgotten …’
‘Forgotten me? Already?’ He pulled her into his arms. ‘Good morning, gorgeous.’
‘What time is it?’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Eight o’clock.’
‘Oh God!’ She struggled from his embrace and threw the covers aside. ‘I’ll be late for work!’
‘You’re not really going to that shop, are you?’
She grabbed a pair of knickers from a drawer. ‘That shop is where I earn money, Hugh. Money – you know – to live on?’
‘I know – but …’
‘Will you make me some tea while I get ready? I don’t want anything to eat.’
He got up reluctantly and filled the kettle at her chipped and drip-stained sink. Through the window he could see the terraces of tall, Victorian tenements just like the one he was stood in; washing lines were strung from window to window, men’s combinations flapping in the breeze like headless, grubby, paper dolls. He hadn’t realised what a slum she lived in. He supposed he’d seen it through the eyes of one blinded by love-sickness. He was sick in a way: he felt feverish with want for her. Lighting the gas beneath the kettle he said, ‘Nina, don’t go to work. You don’t have to –’
She laughed, looking up at him from rolling on a stocking. ‘Of course I do! I need the money, Hugh. Besides, I can’t let Elizabeth down.’
‘What about letting me down?’
‘I’ll be back by six. You can take me to dinner.’
He made tea, at the same time watching her dress and apply her make up. She rolled her hair into a net snood then straightened her stocking seams, twisting her body to see the backs of her legs reflected in her wardrobe mirror. Watching her, thinking about their love-making, he said, ‘Will you marry me?’
She laughed.
‘I’m serious. Will you?’
‘Oh, Hugh – not now. I have to go to work.’
‘I only need you to say yes. It won’t take a minute.’
For a moment she said nothing but stood looking at him until he became self-conscious and glanced away. Through the window he could see smoke rising from the huddled, rain-shiny chimneys into a thick, sulphurous sky. A dog barked over and over. In the next flat a baby began to cry.
He said, ‘I want to take care of you. I want to do everything that it says in the marriage service – love and cherish and honour you.’
She bowed her head and her fingers went to the wedding band on her finger. Slowly she began to twist it until it lay in her palm. Turning away she placed it on her bedside table. She touched it gently and he thought she was about to slip it back on her finger. He found he was holding his breath.
Quietly she said, ‘Honour me?’
He stepped forward, only to stop himself, afraid that showing too much would startle her and break the spell he had somehow managed to conjure. He had to be still and quiet, as though she was a rare bird he had to hide himself from. She couldn’t escape. He wanted her to himself so badly, to be able to say this is my wife. He couldn’t let her see how much he wanted to possess her.
She repeated, ‘Would you honour me, respect me –’
‘Yes.’
‘Despite what you know?’
‘What do I know? Nothing. Only that I love you.’
‘You won’t change your mind?’
‘No!’ He crossed the small space between them and pulled her into his arms. For a moment she held herself stiffly only to relax against him. Her head rested on his shoulder; he thought how well their bodies fitted.
He kissed her head and she looked up at him. ‘I don’t want to wait, Hugh.’
‘As long as it takes to get a licence, that’s all.’
She nodded. ‘I should go to work now.’
‘Let me walk you there.’
‘No. Have the day to yourself.’ She kissed his mouth swiftly before fetching her coat and putting on her hat in front of the mirror. She smiled at his reflection then left so quickly the door swung open behind her. Going out to the landing, Hugh leaned over the banister and watched her run down the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JANE TOOK THE DAY off work. That morning she’d told Adam she suspected she was coming down with ’flu and he had frowned at her for a while, reassuring himself that she was indeed too ill to go into school. He had reminded her of her father when she was a little girl, always on the look out for those who might be taking advantage of him.
At last he’d said, ‘You do look pale. I heard you get up in the night, didn’t you sleep well?’
Unable to look at him she had sat down at the kitchen table and covered her face with her hands to feign tiredness. She heard him sigh and snap his briefcase closed. ‘You’d better go back to bed, Jane. Is there anything you need? Something I can bring you from the chemist?’
She’d shaken her head. A moment later she felt his hand on her shoulder, a quick squeeze and he was gone. At once she’d run upstairs.
Naked, she stood in front of her bedroom mirror and regarded her reflection with as much cool criticism as she could. She had bathed, pouring too much bath oil in the running water. Now her skin felt slippery, lubricated. The bath water had formed globules on her skin as she’d raised her legs and arms to shave the soft, innocent hair that until last night no one else had ever seen. She had shaved to the very top of her thighs, even nicked at her pubic curls to tidy them.
Years ago, she had read in a book on women’s health that the night before her wedding a girl should, whilst bathing, push two of her fingers inside her vagina, allowing the warmth of the water to relax her as she became used to the invasion. The book had said that this technique would help to know what to expect from sexual intercourse; a girl would feel less frigid if she knew and understood her body.
She hadn’t followed the book’s instructions. She already knew and understood her body. She had learned how to bring herself to orgasm, she didn’t need to explore the soft, tight folds inside her. Her frigidity had nothing to do with the fear of pain but of humiliation, the belief that a man like Bobby wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her once the sex was over. She couldn’t shake the thought that men laughed behind the backs of such desperate women.
Late last night, when Bobby had gone and Adam hadn’t yet returned, she had taken out the silk underwear she’d bought for her honeymoon and laid it against her crumpled sheets. T
he bra and cami-knickers, the slip and suspender belt all in what the shop assistant had told her was the finest oyster silk. She had been invited to run her fingers over the slip to appreciate its smoothness. The dry skin of her finger had snagged on the silk, lending credibility to her idea that she wasn’t the type to wear such garments. They would make her feel as though she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t. The shop assistant had been persuasive, though, and suddenly she’d decided that they were only clothes, best clothes that might give her confidence, as all best clothes should. She had bought the whole set happily, feeling audacious as she walked out of the shop carrying the bag in which the underwear was folded in tissue paper and packed secretly in a box.
Laid out on her bed the underwear looked like relics that might be displayed in a museum. They had been worn only once, for a few hours, and had been washed and returned to their tissue paper and box as soon as she’d returned from her honeymoon. She remembered how quickly she had washed them in the sink, the hasty way she had put them away as soon as they were dry enough. She couldn’t bring herself to look at them, they were so foolish. Last night, taking them out again, her heart had hammered in anticipation. But they had looked as though they belonged to someone who had lived and died years before the hardening experience of the war. She had put them away again, unable to decide if her superstitions would allow her to wear them.
But she had nothing else, nothing but ordinary white cotton knickers and bras. She needed the confidence that oyster silk would give her. She began to dress. The silk slithered over her newly depilated skin and she gasped at the thrill of it, as though his hands were stroking her. She closed her eyes as she remembered the experienced lightness of his touch. He would have had many lovers. She worried whether he thought of them as conquests.
She chose a summer dress rather than one of her school-marm suits. In the mirror she looked as if she was about to serve tea at a garden fete and immediately took the dress off again. In the back of her wardrobe was a plain black dress she had last worn to a cousin’s funeral. She remembered how grown up she had felt in it, that its simple cut lent her a measure of sophistication. She would wear the black dress with a string of pearls and the high-heeled black court shoes that had been so impractical at her cousin’s graveside but gave her height and tautened her calves. She would wear the little pillbox hat with its net veil folded back. Her cool silk underwear would calm the heat that spread over her skin whenever she thought about him.
Downstairs, Jane covered her black dress with her everyday coat and checked her appearance in the hall mirror. Her lipstick was a shade too bright and she blotted it on her handkerchief. Stepping closer to the mirror she smiled experimentally and was appalled by how frightened she looked. For a moment she wondered if she could go through with it, only to remember how, as he was about to get into his car, he had stopped and hurried back to where she was watching him from the doorstep. He’d taken out a pen and written down a telephone number on the inside cover of a book of matches. ‘Call me if you need to, if anything happens, if you need me –’ Holding out the matches he’d said awkwardly, ‘Take it, anyway.’
She guessed he wondered at the strangeness of her marriage and that he believed its strangeness was somehow dangerous. He had looked so concerned she had wanted to reassure him but there was nothing she could say, no way to explain that strangeness was sometimes safe.
She looked down at the phone on the table beneath the mirror. Heart pounding, she took the book of matches from her handbag and re-read the neat, bold number although she knew it by heart. Her hands shook as she picked up the receiver and waited for the operator’s voice.
Bobby placed the receiver down and stood looking at it. A minute ago he had been full of purpose, now he was at a loss. He was still in his pyjamas and dressing gown. The frustratingly long time it took him to dress correctly meant that he wouldn’t have time to change the sheets on his bed, to clean the bathroom or to place the daffodils he’d been about to pick from the garden in a vase on the hallway table. The flowers would have been something ordinary to fix on as he showed her into the house. She would have commented on them and he would have told her that they grew like weeds in the garden and would she like to see? In the garden the extraordinary desire he had for her might have been subdued for a while, inhibited by the blank-eyed stare of his neighbour’s windows. He might even have been able to tell her that she should go home to her husband, for her own sake: he would eat her alive if she stayed.
He hesitated, torn between daffodils and dressing. Dressing had to take priority. He couldn’t allow her to see him like this or to smell the thick blunt scent of sleep on him. In a few minutes when she pressed the doorbell he would be dressed, albeit swiftly and casually. He smiled, remembering her bare feet and thinking that perhaps he might leave his own feet bare to save the time wasted struggling with socks and shoelaces.
In the hotel restaurant Francis lingered over his coffee, the last guest to leave. The other guests were mainly single men, like himself, although unlike him they all had work to go to, work that involved dressing in suits and ties and carrying briefcases. Most of them had an air of steadiness that had Francis guessing at how dull their jobs might be. He remembered how unsuited he’d been to the work that other men did to support their families. The indefatigability of his fellow guests made him feel ashamed.
The coffee was weak and tasted more strongly of the chicory it had been adulterated with. He wouldn’t think of it as coffee but as a beverage peculiar only to the English and that way he wouldn’t feel slighted by it. He was determined not to take England personally, a petulance he knew he’d been guilty of since stepping off the boat. Even that boy Stephen had noticed it, laughing as he lay naked beside him , smoking his cigarettes.
‘I’ve never seen anyone actually shudder at a plate of fried egg and bacon before,’ Stephen had said. ‘This morning, when I saw you in the restaurant, shuddering, it clinched it for me, I just knew you were queer.’ Casually he’d asked, ‘Who was that man you were with in the bar?’
When he didn’t answer Stephen went on, ‘An ex-lover. But he still loves you and you’re sad that you don’t love him.’
‘Get dressed now.’
He’d said it gently enough but the boy had looked hurt. Stephen said, ‘I haven’t fucked you yet. Turn and turn about, it’s only fair.’
Francis laughed. ‘I haven’t the energy. Get dressed.’
‘Can I finish smoking this?’ The boy looked down at the tip of the cigarette. ‘They’re foreign, aren’t they? Sweet. Fairy cigarettes.’
‘Put it out if you don’t like it.’
‘Then I’d have to go. I don’t want to go.’ After a moment he said, ‘I read that you were mentioned in dispatches during the first war?’
During a raid on a German trench he had killed their machine-gunner at point-blank range. Like an executioner, Patrick had said later, and without meaning to he had made him feel scared. He couldn’t remember the details of the killing; he’d had to take Patrick’s word for it along with the testimony of the men. He had executed a man. His cold-bloodedness chimed with what he knew about himself and had wanted to keep hidden. But its revelation hadn’t surprised Patrick, only made him want him more. He should have been ashamed of such lust.
The boy was watching him curiously, waiting to be told whether what he’d read was truth or fiction and so Francis said, ‘Lots of men were mentioned in dispatches.’
‘I was in Italy during the war.’ Stephen’s lip curled contemptuously. ‘Bloody Eyeties. Not one of them gave a shit about anything. Couldn’t fucking care less.’ Stubbing his cigarette out he said, ‘I had an easy war. Lucky bugger, eh?’
The boy got up and began to dress. Francis couldn’t stop himself watching him, noting how lean he was, how pale. He’d wondered if he’d become tanned by the Italian sun, if his mousy hair had become lighter until it seemed England had lessened its grip on him. He doubted it.
Sitting
in the restaurant now, Francis considered settling his bill and finding another hotel. He couldn’t face the boy again, couldn’t be bothered with any awkwardness or expectation. And if the boy behaved as if nothing had happened he would feel even more of a fool than he already did. He thought how hurt Patrick would be if he discovered his unfaithfulness but how stoically resigned too. Patrick expected him to behave badly. Patrick made allowances for him. It was infuriating, and that fury was something he had learnt to hide.
He thought about ordering more coffee, of delaying decisions already put off until he was beginning to feel a panicky urgency. He couldn’t panic; he felt sure Bobby would despise such lack of control. Bobby. He closed his eyes, his breathing quickening as the familiar pain closed around his heart. He stood, too agitated to remain still, as though the pain could be placated by action. He would walk by the river; he would walk and think and decide. He paused just long enough for his breathing to steady before making his way out of the hotel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
BOBBY WHISPERED, ‘IF ONLY my hands –’
Jane covered his mouth with her fingers. They lay side by side, his arms wrapped tightly around her. He could feel her breasts against his chest, her nipples soft now. Remembering how they had hardened at his touch, he kissed her mouth. ‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’
‘No.’
He could hear the smile in her voice and he drew away a little to look at her. ‘Can you stay for a while?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘If.’ He grinned. ‘Did you think I’d want you to leave?’
‘I thought you’d kick me out before carving another notch on the bedpost.’
‘Another?’
She sighed and closed her eyes. ‘I could sleep now, I feel so relaxed.’
‘Then sleep.’
‘No. I don’t want to waste my time with you sleeping!’ She laughed. ‘I don’t want to waste a minute of our time together.’
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