by Adam Roberts
No other words could have excited Bates as did these statements of revulsion.
She reached a hand tentatively towards the organ, as if about to touch it, but at the last moment she instead cuffed it - slapped it. It bounced comically under the force of her blow. This stung, but exquisitely. She slapped it again. She leant her face towards it, and spat at it. This time the saliva missed its target, landing upon his thigh. Then she was on her feet, rummaging under her skirts and removing her knickers. Some part of Bates’s mind crowed, yet he could not believe what was happening. He shivered. She lay back upon the bed, and Bates clambered upon her, his whole body trembling as if an ague were in him. He pushed her skirts up and lay in her lap, as Hamlet with Ophelia, but as his cockstand pressed blindly on towards her cut she grabbed a chunk of his hair and twisted it violently. The pain was enough to distract him.
‘Not inside,’ she said. ‘You comprehend?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’
And it hardly mattered anyway - the snout of his member pressed up against her Organ of Venus and almost at once he jerked in the little death, and his seed squirted out. The expression of her disgust was loud in his ears, Euh! Euh! Euh!, so much so that the moment of pleasure was muddied by a fear that her cries might bring other people to her door. But she was wriggling in a kind of fury, pressing the mound of her female Organ against the ledge of his pelvis, pushing and pushing and then, abruptly, she was still. A long sigh breathed from her lips. She went limp beneath him.
He was panting. Sweat itched on his scalp. He did not know what to say.
Outside the window: birdsong.
Light from the sky, and reflected off the sea, and both lights mingled in the glass of the window.
He did not know what to say. The larger picture reoccurred to his mind, and he found himself afraid. She had told him she was to marry the Dean! But, he thought, now - now she must marry me. And the fear was now perfectly knotted up with his hope.
Should he apologise? He had hardly acted as a gentleman. Eleanor! Forgive me! But he did not say anything.
She spoke first: ‘Get off me.’
He rolled to one side.
She sat up and adjusted her dress. She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and reached underneath the skirts to wipe herself.
‘Eleanor,’ he said. His voice was scratchy. He sat up, suddenly and uncomfortably aware of his nakedness, and he scrabbled on the floor to recover his trowsers. They had become inverted and strangely tangled, and in his agitated state he could not seem to make them right. He sat on the bed, leaning forward to cover his private organs, and fumbled with the cloth of them.
‘It seems,’ said Eleanor, in a calm voice, ‘that we share a shameful inability to restrain our baser passions.’
‘I love you,’ he said, without looking at her. ‘I love you. Permit me only to promise you this: that when we are married—’
‘We shall not marry,’ said Eleanor.
He thought about this. He gripped the ankle hem of the left leg of his trowser and pulled the tube of cloth through itself.
‘I shall marry the Dean,’ said Eleanor.
He did not contest this statement directly. It was not in his soul to deny her anything at all. ‘Shall I challenge him to a duel?’ he asked.
He had meant the phrase seriously, as his sole way of articulating once again his love for her. But she laughed at it, a low, clucking laugh, the very first time that Bates had ever heard her make such a sound. And at the laughter he smiled - he had, he decided, intended it as a joke all along. He had been trying to make her laugh.
The trowsers went over his boots with difficulty, and he was compelled to lift his hips and struggle a little, which caused his member to jiggle. When the trowsers were up to his knees Eleanor stopped him.
‘Wait,’ she said, with an almost childlike earnestness. ‘Sit for a moment.’ So he sat on the bed, and she leant forward to bring a scientific curiosity to bear upon his membrum virile. Her lips pursed, as if it were distasteful to her, and yet her eyes were bright with fascination. She reached out and touched the thing, picking it up with thumb and forefinger and letting it drop. It began, again, to stiffen. ‘How ugly it is!’ she said, in an innocent voice. ‘Chicken-skin. Yet the texture of the flesh itself is . . .’ she searched for a word.
‘It is a shameful thing,’ he agreed.
‘I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I mean, in a scientific sense. The texture of the flesh differs from that of any part of the body. It feels granular; a softer manner of-I know not. A softer manner of gristle perhaps.’
‘It is no longer soft,’ he observed, as it stretched itself and grew hard under her hand. Once again she laughed, releasing the organ from her right hand and lifting her left to cover her mouth. ‘How funny!’ she said.
‘Do not blame me I pray you,’ he replied, smiling in turn. ‘It has a mind of its own!’
‘How funny,’ she said again.
‘Eleanor I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you, Eleanor.’
She sat upright again. ‘Pull your clothes on, Mr Bates.’
He began doing so at once. ‘Eleanor, what are we to do? What are we ever to do?’
‘I shall marry the Dean.’
He thought about this. There seemed to be nothing to say except ‘Yes.’
‘He is a man of means. We cannot pretend money does not matter.’
‘Will you put me from you?’ he asked. And in that moment his whole life teetered on the hinge of her answer. She looked at him, bringing him under the same dispassionate inquiry she had just been bestowing on his organ.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so.’
And a shaft of light shone bright through Bates’s soul. He beamed. He could have embraced her, there and then. He did not consider this a shabby second-best; it was, he knew, exactly what he deserved. Which is to say, he knew he deserved no more. Though, of course, he could hope.
‘What must we do?’ he asked her. He was the Red Cross Knight, and she was Gloriana. He was ready to take her commands.
‘We must get away from this town. We must determine,’ she said, ‘which force is more likely to prevail in the war, and make ourselves useful to them. We must, at least, survive.’
‘Yes.’
‘If the English are now beating the French in battle, then we must seize the Computational Device and drive it to them.’
‘Yes.’
‘But if the French are destined to rule this land, as once they did, then we must deliver the Computational Device to the garrison at York, as was the mission of this party.’
‘And you are familiar about the mission?’
‘Henry has told me everything. We are,’ and she smiled, ‘to be married, after all, he and I.’
‘Yes,’ said Bates.
‘But above all, we must leave this town.’
‘Quite apart from anything else,’ said Bates, ‘there is the matter of the pestilence.’
‘The plague,’ she said, nodding. ‘It is a concern.’
[9]
Soon afterwards Bates met again with the Dean. He felt he ought to be anxious about this meeting, but he was not. He was not, despite his act of betrayal with the Dean’s affianced. Betrayal was the word for it. Sin was the word, also. Disgrace, debasement, dishonour, these were the words. Yet merely to think of his encounter sent bubbles of excitement cascading upwards through his torso. Its secrecy, as much as its intimacy, was its thrill. The hiddenness of it bound Eleanor and he together. The fact that she was to marry the old, corpulent Dean - that was something he put from his mind. It would be no true marriage, he thought. The true marriage belonged to him. He had not realised before what power there is in secrecy.
Eleanor led him through to the Dean’s room - for now the hotel had been emptied there were plenty of spare rooms - and they sat together to discuss plans. The Dean, deprived of his specialist snuff, was surly and withdrawn, and snorted air in at his nose from time to time, ma
king thereby a very disagreeable noise. ‘Henry!’ Eleanor scolded mildly.
‘We must decide. The French army will no longer escort us to York, that is clear,’ Bates said.
‘And yet it is to York we must go,’ growled the Dean.
‘Then we must make our own way there,’ Eleanor said briskly. How Bates loved her force of will! How perfectly were manly self-assurance and womanly beauty combined in her! ‘If we could take the Computational Device, it would act as passport through any English sentry - passport into any general’s tent.’
‘It is well guarded,’ the Dean snapped.
‘The plague is running through the soldiery here like fire through autumn stubble,’ said Eleanor, leaning forward.
The Dean snorted, a weird camel-like sound that almost made Bates laugh.
‘Henry!’ rebuked Eleanor.
The Dean stood. ‘I’ll not be scolded like a schoolboy!’ he said querulously. ‘I’ll not stand for it from a woman! You care nothing for my sufferings! My sinuses are like tar! Like molten lead!’
‘Sit down, Henry,’ said Eleanor, sharply.
The Dean sat again with a pained expression on his face. There was silence between them. Then the Dean said, in a small voice: ‘Salt water.’
‘I can’t hear this mumbling,’ said Eleanor.
The Dean set his lips together more tightly. Then: ‘Salt water,’ more loudly.
‘You’ll ask for it with proper courtesy,’ said Eleanor.
The Dean’s face clenched, and settled. Bates found a queer elation in sitting there, spectator to this squabble. He felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, what it was to be powerful.
‘Salt water,’ said the Dean, ‘please.’
Eleanor swept herself to her feet. How proud and fine she was! ‘Abraham and I shall fetch you some, my love,’ she announced. Then she waited. The Dean was staring at the carpet. Bates stood, but Eleanor waited. Eventually, speaking as if the words were being pulled from him by pliers, the Dean said: ‘Thank you.’
Eleanor walked from the room, and Bates followed. He followed her down one flight of stairs, and on the half-landing there he asked: ‘Why does he desire salt water?’
‘He will sniff it up through his nose and spew it from his mouth,’ Eleanor replied, matter-of-factly. ‘He believes it eases the pains in his sinuses. Here,’ and she pushed open the door on the half-landing to reveal an empty room. ‘Find a bowl.’
‘A bowl.’
‘To carry it from the sea.’
‘But whose room is this?’
‘Does it matter? I suppose it is some Frenchy’s.’
‘And what if he returns?’
‘Am I surrounded by cowards?’ she said and stepped into the room. Bates followed. There was a single narrow bed, and a table beside it with a wide wooden bowl upon it. As Eleanor took it and turned, Bates - moved and overwhelmed by her beauty, and moved more, in truth, by her very presence, her accessibility - put his face up to kiss her cheek.
She slapped him. It was a cuff on the side of his head. It was not a painful blow, but he leapt backwards with the shock of it and almost fell. ‘Take this to the shore and fill it,’ she said matter-of-factly, holding out the bowl.
And yet sometimes she would be affectionate with him. It puzzled him, and also acted as a charm upon him. It drew him tighter into the web of her. Once, as they passed along the hallway to the Dean’s room, Eleanor turned to him and demanded, in a quiet voice: ‘Show me it.’ He did not understand what she was asking, yet as she repeated the request he realised that of course he knew what it was. ‘Show it me!’
‘Now? Here?’
‘Yes - immediately.’
‘Shall we go back to your room?’ he asked. But she pushed a fist in his chest so that he stepped backwards and against the wall. There, in that public space, he fumbled his buttons and drew out his member. The blank outrageousness of what he was doing pressed fear into his heart - for what if somebody came up the stairs? Or emerged from a room? What if the Dean himself came out and saw this base display? But this same fear prickled as excitement in his solar plexus. His membrum grew harder. ‘Your hand is obscuring my sight of it,’ said Eleanor in a brisk voice, and he moved his fingers and held it at the base.
‘Be quick,’ he said, glancing left and right. ‘Oh!’
She dropped down and settled on her haunches, brought her face close to the exposed organ. She stared at it, close. There was something of the child in her gaze, the naïf quality of a child’s curiosity. For long seconds she stared at it, moving her head from the left to the right. She seemed to sigh. ‘How ugly it is!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. But hurry.’
‘Hush! Oh, but it is foul.’
‘Somebody might come!’
‘To be burdened with such an ass’s tail,’ she said. ‘Ugh, the colour! The colour at the end, there!’
Then she was standing upright again, and walking away, and Bates must fumble away his shame and hobble after her. But the more she scorned his membrum - quite properly so, of course - the more aroused Bates became.
Night fell, and they took their supper in the hotel’s kitchens with various French officers - none of whom Bates recognised - and afterwards made their way to their rooms. Bates sat in his, listening to the stamp of soldier’s boots on the cobbles outside, and the shouts of command, and he wondered what to do. He yearned for Eleanor, like a dog. His very soul itched for her. And were they not, in a sense, linked? Had they not undertaken their sinful, secret version of marriage? Yet he had no idea whether he should go along now, in the dark, to her room and knock at the door. Would she welcome him in? Or rebuke him and send him away? Fear of the latter balanced desire for the former.
When he could stand it no longer he left his room and crept along the darkened corridor. There was a gleam far below, a lighted room spilling light onto the foot of the stairway. Distantly could be heard the sound of a man sobbing, or moaning. Bates placed his steps carefully, as if the slightest floorboard groan might rouse the Dean. He knocked gently at Eleanor’s door, and knocked again.
Eventually: ‘Who is there?’
‘I, Abraham.’
‘Who?’
Louder: ‘Abraham.’
A pause. ‘What do you want?’
This took him aback. After a moment he hissed: ‘I am concerned at your solitude.’
‘I cannot hear what you are saying.’
Louder, though the wood of the door: ‘Are you alright?’
‘Of course.’
‘I was concerned.’
‘For me?’
‘Yes. May I come in?’
A lengthy silence. The sound of the man sobbing, far below them in the cavernous building, slowed, and ceased. The silence it revealed had an eerie quality. ‘You may not,’ came Eleanor’s voice, clearly articulated.
Bates felt a lurch in his heart; sadness welled from the ceaseless spring inside him. But nothing was too demeaning for him now, and even abasement contained its dark joy for him. ‘Please!’ he urged. ‘I beg of you!’
‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Tonight - no, not tonight.’
This was a straw at which he might clutch. ‘Tomorrow night, perhaps? ’
‘Go away.’
He retraced the steps to his room.
He was awoken by a voice in his ear, which he took - his heart thundering suddenly in his breast - to be Eleanor’s. The voice said ‘Awake! O!’ A small voice, that seemed therefore tender. ‘Rejoice not against me! O mine enemy—’
It was the thought that it was Eleanor, crept into his room like the Song of Solomon, that saved Bates’s life. He was wound so tight with erotic expectation, so thrilled by the possible anticipation, that he almost leapt from the bed - which is to say, he sat up abruptly, and felt, as he moved, a fierce pain at the side of his skull, a little above his ear.
This woke him fully.
Blood was coming out. ‘Eleanor!’ he roared. But she, of course, was no
t in the room. He was alone, save for the voice - and looking down he saw, beside his dented pillow, a Lilliputian, carrying a miniature pikestaff, the hook and bladed end of which held up a crunk of folded skin, several hairs, all bundled into a parcel with bright bead of blood.