‘She wouldn’t wake up if the house was burning down,’ laughed Monty, sinking into Simon’s arms with abandon.
‘But what about Cathy and Caroline?’ Simon unbuttoned her satin blouse.
‘They sleep like logs and anyway they wouldn’t tell on us. I do love you, Simon.’ The satin blouse slithered to the floor, to be joined by Monty’s black boots, white tights and the eighteen-inch wide strip of plum velvet that was her skirt. They undressed each other little by little, then embraced on the threadbare Turkey rug in front of the warm ashes of the fire. To be together, to touch and hold and caress each other – it was all ecstasy, but they dared not make love properly in case Monty got pregnant; they dared not even tell each other how much they yearned to go all the way.
‘Why do you love me?’ Monty asked, snuggling close.
‘I don’t know, you’re not like other girls, that’s all.’ He stroked the soft curve of her hip, gingerly slid his hand between her thighs.
‘You’re not like other boys, either, that’s why I love you.’ Monty reached into the darkness and held the shaft of eager flesh as it swelled in her hand, wondering how it would feel to have it inside her body; It seemed silly to be so close and to love each other so much and to deny themselves the ultimate intimacy. It did not occur to either of them that the most powerful force binding them together was the disapproval of their families. Monty would have been outraged at the suggestion that she cared enough about Bettina’s opinion to flout it.
By the time the crocuses in Hyde Park were fading, the 1965 Season was under way, and the mirror at Trevor Square was half-obliterated with invitations. All over England and Scotland, houses filled at the weekends with extraordinary mixtures of people whose only common link was some connection with the aristocracy. Unregenerate landed gentry, their faces reddened by the winter’s hunting, rubbed shoulders with long-haired jeunesse dorée in velvet jackets. Elderly men who had danced with girls who had danced with Edward VIII frowned at youths in hipster trousers and lace shirts. Women with legs as thick and knotted as ancient oaks smiled wistfully at girls whose sapling thighs were displayed in patent leather boots. Dior swirled disdainfully past Biba; diamonds blazed at plastic flowers, and whiffs of marijuana percolated into the musty folds of tapestries.
There was a ball every Saturday and besides the dance itself, there would also be the house party, a raucous random selection of revellers billeted on the home of a guest who lived near the host, who were given dinner before the dance and a bed for the night after it, with the requisite amount of chauffeuring and chaperonage. In the Season the entire British upper class conspired to get its young mated without undue incident.
The race was on among the young girls to see how far they could go with drink, drug-taking or sexual experiment, without spoiling their chances with the wealthiest men in the pool. In six months or so their social careers would be determined and many would have acquired newspaper cutting files which would pursue them for the rest of their lives.
Cathy and Caroline went first to a couple of dull dances for Caroline’s hunting chums at the other side of the country, where they sipped fruit-punch that was virtually alcohol-free, panted through the Benenden repertoire of Scottish reels and were in bed by 2 am and up the next day in time for a scavenger hunt. These were childish, boisterous and inelegant affairs, no preparation for what was to come.
Then they went to the first big private ball of the season, for the daughter of a wealthy Member of Parliament in Cornwall. Monty was asked as well.
‘Six hours on this bloody train!’ Caroline shoved her suitcase into the luggage rack and plumped down to read a riding magazine.
‘It’ll be worth it. Lucy knows an awful lot of people, and we’re terribly lucky to be invited. Half the college is sick with jealousy.’
‘Hmph. You mean Lucy knows Charlie Coseley so we’ve got to struggle up the length of the country so you can chase after him.’
‘Oh come on, Caroline, we’ll be staying in a castle. It’ll be really romantic.’ Monty gazed out of the window at the grey London suburbs.
‘I suppose you’ve got Simon invited.’ Caroline flicked over a page of light hunters.
‘I didn’t need to get him invited.’ Monty complacently turned towards her cousin. ‘Lucy Limpton’s dying to get her paws on him because he’s an Emanuel.’
Cathy gazed wistfully out of the window. In her heart of hearts she was beginning to admit that she might be stupid to pin all her hopes on landing the catch of the season; but when she compared Charlie’s flashing smile and crisp, gold curls to her slobbery, importunate dates so far, she shuddered. She was beginning to feel nauseated by the mere smell of them.
Catching Charlie was also a question of pride; Cathy smarted at the patronizing expressions of sympathy she got from well-meaning acquaintances: ‘Such a shame about your poor father – nothing in the stories, I suppose?’ was the line, vulgar curiosity masquerading as good manners. She smothered flaring anger every time she passed a knot of strangers and they exchanged comments in low voices, and she heard, or thought she heard, the words ‘suicide peer’yet again. She wanted to show them all that she was a force to be reckoned with, not just a minor figure in a shameful scandal.
It was a small grey castle, taller than it was wide, built at the tip of a steep inlet of sea. On the steps, Cathy straightened her immaculate camel mini-skirt, glad now that she had shortened it as much as she dared, and aware how fine her legs looked in their cream tights and white boots, and how her superbly cut hair would fall silkily back into shape no matter how the relentless wind from the Atlantic whipped it about her head. Was he watching, perhaps, from the narrow windows?
‘For heaven’s sake stop mooning,’ snapped Caroline, ‘I’m turning blue.’
‘The wind is a little fresh today.’ Their host Sir John Limpton had appeared, to lead them indoors. ‘We’re so lucky here in the West: the gulf stream keeps the sea warm so it never gets really cold.’ He was a tall man with hollow cheeks and thinning dark hair. The girls looked at each other and smothered laughter as he led them down dank corridors whose stone walls seemed to be sweating chill. What was the man’s notion of real cold?
Sir John lingered just an instant waiting for the footman to bring up the last suitcase, really wanting to look at Cathy’s legs. In Chelsea, there were many girls, and they all wore a skirt no more than halfway down their thighs. But what Chelsea girls considered mere fashion, older men interpreted as invitation. Sir John’s life was lived in Westminster and the country where there were few girls, and none who showed so much as their knees. He was virtually hypnotized by the pale, slender limbs before him; Cathy was both gratified and disturbed when she noticed him direct a furtive glance at her thighs as he pretended to supervise the footman with their cases.
The dance was dazzling, and even Caroline admitted that the journey had been worth it. There was champagne, a piper at dinner, salmon and venison from the estate; and then half the Opposition front bench seemed to be in the ballroom demonstrating their skill at the Watusi.
Young couples who were already paired off, but by tradition lodged in separate house parties, made their way down the icy corridors looking for a convenient place to make love before getting dressed again and scampering down to the ballroom in time for the toast to the debutante and her future.
Charlie Coseley arrived with the first house party; he had had a row with the red-haired actress who came with him, danced with four or five different girls then swept Lady Limpton on to the floor for an abandoned smooch. This was not unusual: it was considered good form for the men to flirt with their hostess.
Simon arrived late, ran from hall to crowded hall like a seeking gundog until he found Monty, and then pulled her outside. On the gravel, stood a sleek, dark car. ‘Get in!’ He pulled open the passenger door with care. Monty looked at him, not understanding.
‘But whose is it, Simon? Have you borrowed it?’
‘Nope. I’ve bought it
.’
‘But it’s an Aston Martin!’
‘So what?’ He ran round to the other side and climbed in beside her. ‘My grandmother left me some money. It’s been in trust for me for years, until I was twenty-one. So now I’m twenty-one!’ He dragged her uncomfortably towards him across the gearstick, kissed her with a new mastery, then broke off and started the engine with a roar. The powerful headlamps caught the stone parapet, the drawbridge and the close-pressed firs beyond. Wild with his new freedom, Simon drove them away.
‘Where are we going?’ Happily Monty settled in the low-slung seat.
‘Anywhere! Let’s just go!’ Simon jammed a tape into the player and loud music filled the car. Monty giggled.
‘It’s just like a little house.’
‘You can put the seats down to make a bed, too.’ He reached over and squeezed her thigh.
They sped along narrow stone-walled roads and, after Simon had nearly slaughtered a sheep, Monty persuaded him to drive less fast. They found a spectacular beach of fine silver sand, pulled off their clothes and leapt into the boisterous sea, exhilarated by the April cold and by the gloriousness of feeling like the only two figures in the landscape.
Later, cocooned in the car with Monty’s Biba ballgown as a blanket, Simon said, ‘There’s something I want to ask you.’ He’s going to ask if we can make love properly, Monty thought thankfully. But instead, he asked, ‘If I buy an apartment, will you come and live with me?’
‘Can you really buy an apartment?’ Monty said, testing this wonderful dream.
‘Yep. I’ve got enough money for a deposit, and I went to see an accountant who says I can easily get a mortgage once I go to work for my father.’
‘But I thought you didn’t want to go into the business?’
‘I don’t, but nothing’s happening for me with music right now.’
‘But you’ll get a break soon, Simon, I know you will. It’s only a matter of time.’ Monty felt as if he were proposing to renege on their shared faith. They both agreed that rejecting the world of their parents was the beginning of wisdom.
‘Are you saying no, Monty?’ His voice shrank to a fearful half-whisper. He desperately wanted her to live with him, but knew that her family, as well as his, would be enraged.
‘Oh, darling Simon, no – I mean, yes – I mean of course I’ll come and live with you. I love you, don’t I?’ Their lips met for a long, uncomfortable and passionate kiss. Monty felt her skin chilled and gritty from the sand of the beach, and she was suddenly worried by a new thought.
‘Simon, I’m going to have to go on the Pill, aren’t I?’
‘We can be careful, darling, just like now.’
‘Uh huh – maybe you can be careful, but I can’t. Not if I’m living with you, Simon. Can’t you see how awful it would be? We’d just be dying to do it properly all the time. I’ll have to get the Pill somehow.’ But where was she going to get the Pill without being married?
At 4 am the castle was still ablaze with lights. The discotheque was quiet, and in the dining hall liveried servants were setting out a line of silver chafing dishes for the breakfast. Cathy and Caroline trudged up the stairs to their room, footsore and dejected. Ahead of them on the first-floor landing a group of smart. London guests were shrieking with merriment at one boy who had taken some LSD. Acid was the new diversion for the more daring men, who gaily ravaged their nervous tissues with weekend after weekend of trips, to the entertainment of the more timid onlookers.
‘I think I must be the only girl in the room Charlie didn’t dance with,’ Cathy paused to take off her shoes. ‘He had a stinking row with that actress, got frightfully drunk and grabbed every bird he could reach – but not me.’ She looked exhausted but still luminously beautiful. Her hair was pinned up in a pile of glossy curls, and sprinkled with tiny white silk flowers. Her dress was of the palest pink slub silk, with a high waist, long, fitted sleeves and rows of minute buttons at the wrists and down the back. It was a dress she had made herself and it had taken hours of labour to cover every tiny button and stitch the exquisite silk flowers on to hairpins.
‘Never mind,’ Caroline consoled her, ‘he was obviously too sloshed to notice that you were the most beautiful girl in the room.’
‘I’ve got a filthy headache, too. I don’t think much of Lucy’s father’s taste in champagne.’ At the top of the ugly oak staircase they turned along the corridor to their allotted bedroom, and opened the door on a self-conscious attempt at an orgy. The air was foetid with marijuana and ten or twelve people were lying on the floor watching the actress who had come with Charlie Coseley. She was naked except for a smudged layer of body paint, and she was ineffectually trying to touch up the design on her buttocks in the mirror.
‘You shouldn’t have sat down, April,’ sniggered a man in a polo-necked evening shirt, passing the joint, ‘spoiled my work of art.’
Caroline stomped undaunted into the laughing circle.
‘Look, this is our room. Go and find somewhere else to play.’
They laughed helplessly, some coughing in the fumes.
‘Oh cool it, Caro, siddown and have a smoke.’
‘No thank you.’
‘No thank you!’ he mimicked her prim tone, to gales of giggling. The handle of the bathroom door rattled noisily then there was pounding from the other side and cries of ‘Open up!’ Nobody took much notice.
At last the boy in the polo-necked shirt struggled to his feet and tried the door. ‘’ Slocked. Where’s key?’ There were louder shouts and more knocking.
‘Help! Let us out – Jeremy’s having a bad trip.’
Another man blundered across to join the struggle and together they smashed the door lock with the leg of a massive carved chair.
Three people squeezed simultaneously through the splintered doorway. ‘Oh God, you’re all orange!’ the first man shouted happily, then pitched over the nearest pair of legs and sprawled on the carpet, his limbs rowing back and forth like those of an upturned beetle.
Behind him stood Monty’s school friend, Swallow Lamotte, her strawy blond hair now waist length. Apart from a man’s black bow tie dangling loose down to her nipples, she was wearing nothing. The man with her wore only his socks and a mass of shaving foam around his lower belly.
‘Oh hello, you two. I was just trying to trim Jeremy’s pubes for him. Terrible vibes in here. What’s up?’ Swallow’s taste for debauchery couldn’t overcome her basic common sense, nor her sensitivity to social atmosphere.
‘We want to go to bed, that’s all.’ They all sniggered and Cathy bit her tongue with embarrassment at her unthinking choice of words. ‘This was our room, Swallow.’ Her head throbbed unbearably and she rested her cheek against the chill stone doorway for some relief.
‘Plenty of room!’ slurred the ginger-haired actress generously. ‘Join th’party.’ She waved towards the bed. For the first time they noticed that it was occupied by a couple. The girl was virtually unconscious, and the man, grimly drunk, was grinding his limp penis against her trying to get an erection. He looked round at Caroline, suddenly cheerful at the promise of more lively company, then rolled off and picked up a half-empty bottle of brandy beside the bed.
‘Lots of room – have a drink, you two. Whass yer name?’
‘Your best bet is to kip down in the housekeeper’s room,’ Swallow briskly advised. ‘Ground floor, north wing, down the passage at the back of the dining hall. Just take your night clothes, I’ll make sure the rest of your stuff is OK.’ She stepped over the sprawled bodies and showed Caroline and Cathy out of the rooms like a gracious hostess. ‘You can ask the housekeeper for an aspirin, she’s bound to have one. See you in the morning.’
They walked slowly back to the staircase, too shocked and too tired to say very much. The room which they presumed to be the housekeeper’s, on the ground floor off a corridor which led to the kitchen, was at least warm, heated by a substantial coal fire. There was one ordinary bed and a sofa, on which Caroline
flopped to give the miserable Cathy the better berth.
Cathy first searched the spartan bathroom for aspirins. She found these, took the tablets and then roused the drowsy Caroline to unbutton her dress. Miserable as she was, Cathy looked in the closet for a hanger, but then found that the rail in the closet was too low for the long gown to hang without crumpling. She decided to hang the dress in the bathroom, from the head of the ancient shower fitment which drooped like a sunflower over the tub.
Caroline was already asleep, snoring gently, and Cathy was just on the point of drifting into slumber when the door of the room crashed open, and a wedge of harsh light penetrated the darkness. A tall figure lurched through the doorway, holding the door handle for support.
‘Fucking buggering hell!’ it swore as its unsteady legs collided with Caroline’s outstretched calves and half-dislodged her from the sofa. Three more staggering steps took the figure to the bathroom door.
‘Whatever is going on? What do you think you’re doing?’ Caroline demanded in ringing tones as the bathroom door smashed into the wall and the figure half-fell through it. There was the sound of a man about to throw up, followed by the unmistakable sound of badly aimed vomit splattering porcelain. The smell of semi-digested food soused in liquor pervaded the room.
Cathy sleepily sat up. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, her eyes flickering open, feeling instantly angry. ‘What the hell do you mean by barging into our room like this? You’re smashed out of your skull! How dare you charge into our bathroom? If you’ve ruined my dress …’ She scrambled out of bed, impatiently disentangling the ruffled skirt of her white Victorian nightgown.
‘Now look here …’ Caroline picked herself up from the floor and put on the light. She stood like an angry Valkyrie by the open door, her beefy shoulders straining at the armholes of her blue Laura Ashley nightdress.
The intruder was leaning against the bathroom door, extremely drunk, wiping his chin with the skirt of Cathy’s exquisite pink gown. The rest of the dress was soaked with the foul-smelling contents of his stomach. Charlie Coseley had evidently drunk a lot of red wine that evening.
Pearls Page 18