The Face of Eve

by Betty Burton

  The outline and features of the house were easy to see in the bright moonlight.

  ‘Do you know who lived here?’ Eve asked.

  ‘I don’t actually. Well, there are rumours that… well, no, one shouldn’t pass on rumours.’

  ‘Griffon House? Why Griffon?’

  ‘I do know that. Come back here.’ She took a few steps away from the house until she was brushing against the high, dense laurels. ‘There now, look up.’

  Dimitri too looked where the woman pointed.

  The beast that stared down was as big as a man and ready to swoop down upon them. Snow and frost etched its folded dragon wings and talons, its patterned breast and great, hooked beak.

  ‘Good God! It seems to be looking right at us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, he is, Miss Anders. He is carved like that to a purpose.’

  ‘Is this a wooden thing? Or is it plaster?’

  ‘He is a great hand-carved wooden beast.’

  Eve, still looking, said, ‘He? You made a point of that.’

  Sanderson gave a litde giggle and straightened her jacket. ‘Very definitely, Miss Anders, but you would need to be in what was called a ‘salon’ to… well, get the full picture. Not a thing one would want impressionable young girls to see – if you get my meaning.’

  ‘Is not true griffon, but he is Bavarian, that I am nearly sure. He is a house-guard. Is not easy to rob house with such creatures around. There should be others?’

  ‘Well, yes, Major, there are four more.’

  ‘But not so… ah – virile. Hey, is right word, Eve?’ He looked up at the ugly creature almost admiringly.

  Private Sanderson again gave that knowing little giggle. ‘You are right. The others are female, or maybe neuter. How did you guess?’

  ‘Is not a guess. I have seen others. Big man monster guarding entrance watching who comes, like the sphinx in Egypt.’

  ‘You’re not superstitious, Major?’

  ‘Perhaps. Just a little.’

  No one answered the doorbell, but a man shining a torch before him came round the corner of the house crunching frozen snow. ‘Keef?’ Sanderson asked.

  ‘You have to come to the side door.’ He picked up a couple of bags. ‘This way. Milord’s had all the leaded windows boarded up – in the event of bomb-blast.’

  ‘The front door looks OK.’

  ‘It won’t tomorrow.’

  Electra said good night, and Eve and Dimitri followed the bobbing light along the path to the door over which an eerie blue lamp shone coldly. A series of curtains that did not slide on rings made a maze of an outer lobby, clinging and hampering, putting up a fight with any attempt at a swift entrance or exit. Then suddenly the visitors were within a warm and welcoming hall whose floor was a startlingly beautiful mosaic.

  A tall, slim, splendidly exotic woman, aged over thirty but below forty, bore down upon them. She was dressed in a vivid flamenco skirt and warm jumper in Shetland wool over which floated a long fringed stole that must have belonged with a georgette tea gown. Her hair was bound with a scarf tied in a complicated knot. She was grateful; everything about her floated gracefully.

  ‘Ah, Keef, these must be the guests from Australia. Goodness, look at that wonderful suntan. Hello, my dears.’ She held out a hand, wrists jangling charms and jewels. ‘Phoebe Moncke. My job is to keep this place running on oiled wheels.’ She laughed generously, leading them further into the house. ‘Joke. Right, Keef? Keef knows; times when it’s a bit of a bear garden.’

  Eve shook her firm, dry hand. ‘It looks good to me. Must be a bear garden on oiled wheels.’

  Again that warm laugh.

  As Dimitri took her hand he raised it and brushed his lips. ‘Thank you, I am very pleased to be in English house, Miss Moncke… is Miss?’

  Ignoring the question as to her marital status, she said, ‘Major dear, how sweet. Do call me Phoebe; everyone does. If you need anything and I’m not around, you can give the gong a whack and Keef will come – won’t you, Keef? – like a genie from his lamp. Your wish is his command.’

  Keef might have been deaf for all the response he showed. Phoebe Moncke gave them a friendly smile with her mouth and a shrewd look with her eyes. Her chaotic appearance and chatter didn’t chime with the shrewdness.

  ‘Sorry, but I have to write down some stuff about you – like a hotel, really. Come through to the warm room – we always try to keep one room liveable.’

  They went on to the next room but Keef did not follow.

  The room, with its decorative ceiling and embossed wallpaper, was at odds with the uninteresting utilitarian furniture. There were no curtains, but shutters were fastened across the tall windows. A fire in the marble fireplace saved everything. Large lumps of tree burned brightly.

  ‘Take a pew and get warm. Nice G&T?’ After blowing down a speaking tube, she pronounced clearly, ‘Whoever is in there – bring some drinks in the warm room if you will.’

  As they were warming up, Keef came in with four drinks on a tin tray, offered them, took one himself and sat close to the fire.

  Eve hadn’t had such a good G&T for a long time.

  ‘Good stuff, Keef. Is this the bottle Baz Faludi brought in?’

  ‘On its last legs.’

  ‘Oh well, much appreciated. Cheers, my dears. Welcome to Griff. Now let’s just get shot of the paperwork. The questions are quite straightforward, if you will just check that we have your name right and that sort of thing. And your passports, please. They go into the safe whilst you are with us.’ She laughed. ‘Safe – you should see it – more like a vault. Makes one speculate on what Milord kept in it.’

  Eve opened the battered bag that had been with her since she first began travelling, but Dimitri took the bag from her and refastened it. ‘I think we keep these.’

  Phoebe smiled. ‘Major dear, it’s easy to see that you have travelled in countries where papers and passports should never leave your person – but this is England.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Moncke. Is wonderful that I am at last here. I know for sure that secret police will not keep my papers from me in UK. Even so, is better if I keep them safe for now.’

  A short, silent skirmish ensued in a battle of egos, which Phoebe Moncke lost – or at least made a strategic withdrawal. ‘So be it, Major darling. Now, I am sure that you will want to get settled in. Keef, will you show them up? Keef, by the way, is in cahoots with me here. He’s good with the paperwork, I’m more practical. You might not think so, but I am. Now, you have connecting rooms, small bathroom at the end of the landing. Be dears and don’t take deep baths. We try not to bathe every day. Two overhead showers, quick and clean at the same time as being patriotic. Must save fuel as we are urged. Quite right too.’

  One of Eve’s dearest friends used to say of his covert homosexuality, ‘It takes one to know one.’ Eve knew Phoebe Moncke was as much a put-up job as she herself was. Her approachability, eccentric dress and disarming, dotty way of speaking was acquired, as was Eve’s cool poise and cultured accent. If you weren’t careful you could easily find yourself falling for it.

  ‘Chatter, chatter, that is my worst trait. Anyone will tell you so. What you need is rest and quiet, so up you go, and we will talk in the morning.’

  4

  Suddenly, after days and days of being moved from pillar to post, they were alone, standing in a room, numbered 10 by a postcard pinned to the door. An electric heater with a fan blasted welcome heat into the chill air.

  Dimitri laughed aloud and flung out his arms as though to embrace the astonishing cream-and-pewter-coloured room. ‘Is wonderful!’

  Eve laughed. ‘And amazing. I’ve only ever seen this stuff in magazines.’

  ‘Art Decadent… is very good.’

  ‘Art Deco.’

  ‘No, no… I know Deco, this is Art Decadent.’ He picked up a stylised naked nymph holding a table lamp. ‘See.’ He patted Eve’s bottom and let his hand rest there. ‘You do that same thing.’
<
br />   ‘What same thing?’

  ‘Toss your head when I do the things you like with my tongue. You like to try now?’ He was already pulling loose his neatly knotted necktie and popping out shirt studs.

  Although Eve felt the first strong shiver of desire that she had known in weeks of coolness, with it she felt anxiety, not sure that she was ready for a return to the urgent passion that they had known in Spain. Or rather, not sure that she would succeed and so they might yet again collapse into frustration and unspoken reproach.

  Jess Lavender, who had been their saviour in Australia, had said, ‘You expect too much of yourself, sweetheart. You’ve had a bad time, what with the war and being starved half to death.’ She had been right. Eve had had a worse war than Dimitri as far as deprivation went; his body and spirit had hardly changed.

  Sitting on the edge of the gorgeous bed, she kicked off her high-heeled shoes. ‘Absolute bliss,’ she said as she warmed her feet by the heater and allowed her head to sink into the pillows. She felt relaxed and idle. Random thoughts flittered around her mind as she watched Dimitri undo his clothes.

  How much pleasure his broad, solid torso had given her, not too hairy, but enough for the sensation she enjoyed. Narrow hips, rugged legs, and arms strong enough, when they made unhurried love, to hold himself above her until they were both ready for him to let his weight settle upon her. She had never been able to support herself on her arms for as long, but then, when she took the initiative, lovemaking was usually swift and energetic.

  Barefoot and with his shirt hanging open and his trousers unfastened, he came to sit on the edge of the bed and idly traced patterns on her arms and legs. It was so wonderful to be easy together again. It had been so long.

  ‘That’s nice.’ She closed her eyes and allowed other thoughts to run around in her mind.

  The invitation to return to England had come at the right time.

  Now they were here. Eve Anders and Dimitri Vladim, who had found each other in one war, were about to be involved in another. Ready to choose a new direction. A third major crossroads. The first had been about principle when she had confronted the factory owner she’d worked for. The second following quickly on that when she had left behind her first twenty years, become Eve Anders and gone to Spain. That had been about idealism.

  Now, the secret service. This was about patriotism. As well – she admitted to herself – as feeding her ambition. Becoming one of an elite group was a step towards fulfilling the deal she had made with herself: never let life become humdrum or domesticated. Never be defined by a man. Her assets were intelligence, fearlessness and determination; her liabilities, passion and what her brothers called ‘going off in all directions at once’. Outwardly cool and composed, in the right circumstances with the right man, she had a combustible nature.

  Only four men had ever attracted her in any serious way. Duke, David, Dimitri and Ozz.

  David Hatton, although he had seen her passion flare up, had not had sex with her. He had been what her mother would have called ‘a perfect gentleman’.

  Ozz, sensitive, generous, a homosexual, had been killed in Spain.

  Duke was in her life like a dark secret. They had known one another from the time when they were emerging from childhood. He was the one who knew her best, the one who, if he walked back into her life, would assume that they had rights to one another’s body. Duke Barney had been her first lover. Where he was, or what he was doing now, she had no idea, except that it would be certain to have to do with horses – and money. A lot of it.

  Dimitri had taken her moments of urgent hunger for sex as a bonus to his own. He became lost in passion when she was the one to initiate it. She probably didn’t realise how lucky she was to have a man who accepted her as she was. Unfortunately, he had fallen in love with her; wanted them to be married.

  Now, he tumbled her onto the cream satin covering a springy bed, and unhitched her silk stockings.

  ‘Hey, that may be the last pair I’ll have for ages.’

  ‘OK, do that thing… roll them down, slowly like in the hotel.’

  They had both loved those few days’ break in the journey here. The first time since she left home that her legs had been encased in fine stockings. The first time he had seen her so beautifully clothed in silk underwear, embroidered, film-star glamorous, the stockings attached to white, satin suspenders.

  ‘Is like unwrapping a special gift. I would like you always to wear such things.’ He ran his warm hands up and down her legs, teasing her, getting ever closer to her stocking-tops. She let him, knowing that these apparently idle moments of teasing and caressing inevitably led to them reaching a climax together.

  ‘Careful!’ She saved the lamp from landing on them, then, laying back, arms flung over her head, she breathed a heavy sigh and accepted a soft kiss from Dimitri’s smiling mouth.

  ‘Is long time since I have seen you with so much happiness in your eyes.’

  When had that been? Happiness had been just about the rarest commodity in a Spain short of everything except violence.

  Putting her arms about his neck, Eve looked into his eyes and suddenly felt good. They smiled at one another, caressing as she disrobed him and he undressed her, and bits of their tanned bodies were revealed. It was as though the turgid flow of their recent relationship had suddenly become smooth-running again.

  Eve said, ‘I love your eyes. Do you remember that day when I opened the door by mistake and found you holding an inquiry into the death of that nurse? That look! You glared. GPU officer look – hard as nails. I thought, he must be an absolute pig.’

  ‘Even so, you let me come to your room that same night. I guessed you were not so cold as you looked. I think you were wanting to fuck with hard-as-nails pig?’

  ‘True. I’m glad you don’t give it credit for being lovemaking.’

  ‘So true. You had no patience to wait for us to do it. I was big boss Russian Commissar; you said to yourself, I will have him.’

  ‘Oh, so it was only me who wanted it.’

  ‘I did not say that. You drive the big limousine car like it was your own. You drive… did drive… you drove like a man. I think you look as haughty as czarina.’

  ‘You’ve never told me that.’

  ‘I watched you all the time, and your boss-lady watched me. I think Alex was not surprised that we took such a quick fancy of one another.’

  Eve laughed and shook her head. ‘Oh dear, Dimitri, what shall I do when these people have knocked your English into shape?’

  There was a pause, when he didn’t respond. ‘Have you ever wondered what would have happened if I had not opened my legs for you that night?’

  For a second his eyes clouded. ‘Why think of it?’

  The question that she had almost asked him at other times: ‘Would you have come back?’

  ‘Yes. It was love I felt for you then. I do still. So much.’

  ‘Dimitri, I can’t take on the responsibility of being loved. You threw everything overboard and came with me and the girls. You had so much, and now you have very little. Now, you don’t really have me.’

  ‘I know. I was not forced to buy Josep Alier’s papers to escape. I was not forced to disappear from army. You don’t want marriage with me… OK. You are young for marriage. I understand. I love you. I cannot change love.’ He caressed her with the expertise he had learned at the hands of the courtesans Uncle Leon had taken him to in his youth. ‘I believe you. Is of no consequence… no damn! Is of consequence, but we have this thing… we are good lovers.’

  His fingers had reached the buttons on her cami-knickers.

  She tousled him, breathing in the warm wool and cotton of his new clothes.

  He kissed her passionately, then grinned down as they moved together. Suddenly he rolled off the bed.

  ‘Dimitri! What are you doing?’

  ‘To see if next room is better. Maybe. Also I get some johnnies which is in my tooth bag.’ Opening the connecting door, he let out
a whistle. ‘You should see. Come.’

  Eve shivered as she stood looking at the amazing room. He wrapped her in his arms as they took in its full beauty. Art Nouveau at its most restrained and beautiful. Black and white and silver.

  ‘This is a man’s room, probably that of the master of the house. You must have it.’

  Dimitri caught her about the waist and pressed himself close, aroused again. Grinning, his good white teeth and red lips framed by his beard, he nuzzled her neck, his hand pushing her skirt up. ‘Nyet! You must have it.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, you crude Russian backwoodsman.’

  ‘Crude, crude? Is not crude, is sexful, is Russian. We do not have clever wit like you English.’

  ‘Stop talking so much. Russians will talk. Which bed?’

  ‘No bed. Here, on floor of master of house. No, quick, stand up.’

  Joy and laughter surging through her, she tickled him under his arms, which made him struggle and laugh until he stopped it with a passionate kiss, grasping her waist and drawing her close. She wanted him so much that, when she felt his erection hard against her, she relaxed and took him in. Then as they were about to move again, she twisted away. ‘For God’s sake, Dimitri, get those damned Durex.’

  She laughed when he tossed the box on the bed. ‘You buying in bulk now?’

  He opened a packet, fumbling in his haste, and swore in Russian. ‘I have plans to use every one.’

  Taking the disc from him she expertly made him safe. He hoisted her legs around him, nearly too late, and he murmured something she didn’t understand as they reached the extremity of pleasure together.

  She kissed him in the uninhibited way of her old self and fell back onto the bed. ‘Oh, Dimitri, that was amazing.’

  Falling down beside her, he said, ‘Look at you, all disarray. You look like bad woman in Kharkov red-light district. Maybe you want that I pay for you? I would like to pay, it would be some fun. How much you would charge?’

  ‘How much am I worth?’

  Pushing her damp hair away from her forehead, he looked tenderly into her eyes. ‘Everything I have… which now is only my life.’ Then he grinned, ‘And a box of one hundred best Durex.’