‘Will he be coming to the disco?’ asked Nita.
‘As far as I know.’
‘I’m definitely booking a dance!’ She hunched her shoulders and gave me a cheeky, confiding little smile. ‘Now then—a nice piece of mild cheddar and some spreading marge …’
It was a quarter to three when we eventually parked the van outside my front gate. I was to take charge of the non-perishables, while Nita would take the rest home to store in her freezer. As we opened the back of the van, the Ghikasmobile drew up behind us, and Constantine put his head out of the window.
‘Afternoon, ladies!’ he called. ‘Need a hand?’
‘I should say so!’ cried Nita. ‘ Lovely!’
He got out. He was in his shirtsleeves. I definitely needed a hand. His.
‘Hallo, Harriet,’ he said cheerfully, branding me once more between the shoulder-blades. ‘ I say, what have you been doing, getting supplies for the fall-out shelter?’
‘Food for the disco,’ explained Nita. ‘You are coming, aren’t you?’
‘You couldn’t keep me away. Are you unloading everything here?’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘ Just the bottles and tins.’
I opened the front door and the three of us brought the stuff in and piled it on the kitchen table.
‘Anyone for a cold drink?’ I asked when we’d finished.
‘I’d love to, but I must tootle off,’ said Nita. ‘Everything to do and no time to do it, same old story!’
We came to the gate and saw her off in the camper-van, and then I turned to Constantine.
‘Cheerio. Thanks for the help.’
‘Don’t I get the cold drink?’
‘Yes—sorry, yes of course, if you’d like one.’
We went back into the kitchen. The presence of Fluffy and Spot, and the distant tootings of the guinea pigs, all soliciting for food, somehow served to underline the absence of humans. We were very much alone.
I had assembled squash, lemon slices and ice cubes, and was running the cold tap when he grabbed me.
Now, Erica Jong has immortalised the zipless fuck—that free and easy congress untramelled by the formalities of courtship or foreplay—but I had never thought to experience it myself.
Which all goes to show how wrong you can be. Within literally seconds of Constantine clasping me round the waist, we were at it like an animated cement mixer, rattling, rolling and pounding against the door of the fridge. Even in the considerable heat of the moment I found myself thinking that he must have done this kind of thing before, to have perfected such astonishing legerdemain with regard to women’s clothing. For my afternoon with Nita I had been wearing tight jeans and a belt, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a waistcoat. For the purposes of casual intercourse I represented a sartorial Alcatraz. But if I was Alcatraz, he was the Bird Man. My God, I thought to myself, if this is his pitch with riveted jeans, my yellow elasticated jogging shorts must have looked like the gates of the Perfumed Garden flung wide.
Such had been my (albeit latent) anticipation, and such his own speed and enthusiasm, that the entire coupling, with satisfaction on both sides, took less than five minutes.
On disengaging, we both sank to the floor where several ice cubes were melting rapidly, to form an icy puddle. In the sink, the cold tap was still running busily.
‘Heavens,’ I gasped. ‘ If the four-minute warning ever comes, I’ll know who to send for.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Constantine chattily, giving my cheek a huge lick like a calf with a block of sea salt. I had pulled up my pants but my skin-tight jeans still hobbled me neatly round the knees. My waistcoat was off, my T-shirt round my neck, and my bra undone.
‘Just look at me,’ I said.
‘I am.’
‘You took me by surprise.’
‘Did I?’ He sounded genuinely amazed. ‘ I must say I thought we’d dealt with the necessary preamble.’
It was then that I finally realised that I was into a whole new ball game.
I waved goodbye, not without certain misgivings, to Bernice’s polite and bashful intern. I had been uneasy in my role as predator; my unease was at an end. I had thought that I knew my subject but, as my friend would have said, I couldn’t have been wronger. A delightful, but distinctly dangerous future stretched ahead.
He put his arm round me and kissed me. All his caresses were characterised by an extreme incisiveness.
‘I can’t tell you,’ I mumbled, ‘how worried I’ve been since Saturday …’
‘Oh, really …?’ He pushed his hot, wet tongue so deep in my ear I thought it might come out the other side. ‘Why on earth was that?’
‘Um … well … you know, it was all a bit unexpected … and then that boy might have seen us …’
‘What boy?’
‘You know—the fat one—he was sitting behind us all that time.’
‘Oh, really? Good experience for him.’ He planted his open mouth firmly over mine, at the same time clasping a breast in either hand. I was completely transported. If a second helping was on offer I could very easily stand it. What with his enveloping muscular warmth, the now tepid puddle of melted ice beneath us, and the smooth, chill surface of the refrigerator at my back, I was in an agonisingly acute state of sensory arousal, goose pimples in some places, perspiration in others, extreme readiness everywhere.
We had just slithered, murmuring and squelching, into a more orthodox position when I heard the gate click shut and open again, and this sharp douche of reality reminded me that it was about the time that Clara came home from school.
But if I had envisaged being the fearful, cautious partner, leaping up and leaving my lover in a discarded heap on the floor, I was wrong again. As with answering the telephone, protection of his status must have been as natural to Constantine as breathing. With the same lightning speed with which he’d jumped me in the first place he shot to his feet, adjusted his dress, flattened his hair and was at the sink filling a glass, leaving me to get my act together as best I could. Crouched over and clutching at my jeans I hobbled like a frantic Quasimodo to the downstairs cloakroom.
As I did up fastenings and peered at my new-style cuckolding self in the mirror, I heard Constantine talking to Clara in the kitchen. And the best of British luck, I thought.
But when I joined them, they appeared to have struck up an immediate rapport.
‘… so you’ll be there too?’ he was asking genially, leaning back against the sink and sipping his drink, relaxed as you please. He wasn’t even flushed.
‘Yes,’ said Clara. ‘Mummy doesn’t like discos, but I do.’
‘Why don’t you like them?’ asked Constantine.
‘Too noisy,’ I grunted. I seemed to have lockjaw.
‘Sign of old age, Ma,’ said my daughter.
Constantine drained his glass and set it down on the draining board, smacking his lips. ‘That was most welcome. I must be off.’
‘Must you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Duty calls.’
‘Thank you for—’ I flapped a nerveless hand at the mountain of provisions on the kitchen table—‘lending a hand.’
‘Not at all. Goodbye, Clara! Glad I was passing at the right moment.’
I opened the front door for him. My legs were like a couple of those infernal frankfurters in brine, damp and bendy.
‘See you soon,’ I said. ‘And thanks again.’
Without even checking on Clara he leant over and sucked my neck.
‘My pleasure,’ he said. And went.
Back in the kitchen Clara was taking a jug out of the fridge.
‘Yuk!’ she complained. ‘The milk’s slopped all over everything, and it wasn’t me that slammed the door.’
I opened my mouth to make some extenuating remark, but even as I did so she put down the jug, bent over and picked up my waistcoat from where it still lay on the floor.
‘This is all soggy too,’ she remarked, dangling it from finger and thumb and then lobbing it i
n my direction. ‘And you’re always telling me not to drop things wherever I take them off!’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
When I woke next day I was just a great big silly smile on legs. So rapid had been the turn of events the previous day that I’d scarcely had time to appreciate their implications, but now that they had sunk in I was so elated I was practically airborne. I found that I was spattered with bruises, and there was a red mark on my neck, but far from feeling any discomfort I glowed rosily all over as if I’d been given a good rubdown with a rough towel. I was so benign and relaxed that I did not once quiz Gareth about his homework, nor did I apprehend Clara for going to school in jeans.
There was no doubt now that there would be no shame in asking Constantine to come to Fartenwald for at least part of the time. Indeed, it appeared there was no shame, full stop. I felt as if I’d been running a race in the dark, thinking myself last, and had suddenly burst into daylight and crossed the finishing line as winner. It was heady stuff. And as Bernice had predicted, I was like a junkie, gasping for it. The next occasion could not come too soon for me.
Fate, it appeared, was colluding with me, for while we were eating breakfast, American paperback copies of one of my earlier works, Flight from Love, arrived in the post. Or to be more precise the postman bellowed ‘Parcel!’ and lobbed them over the gate, in order to avoid a close encounter of the canine kind.
I opened the package on the table, and took out a couple of copies.
Gareth immediately took one and scanned the front cover.
‘Erk,’ he said. ‘ Bo Derek meets Godzilla.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said automatically, but in truth the cover wasn’t too good. I seemed to remember the story was a latter day version of the fable of Beauty and the Beast, and the somewhat literal transatlantic interpretation featured—well—Bo Derek and—’
‘Who’s the bloke in the background?’ asked Gareth, through cereal. ‘A pirate?’
‘A sea captain,’ I said. ‘Shorto Macfadyen.’
Clara took a copy. ‘Medallion Man,’ she offered, and began riffling through the pages.
‘Looking for the dirty bits again?’ said Gareth.
‘There are no dirty bits,’ I reproved him.
‘Pull the other one, Ma,’ said Gareth, ‘It’s got a synthesiser on.’
Clara began reading the blurb on the back. ‘It says here, “Katrina—a woman of two worlds, a woman divided, a woman torn between passion and honour, love and pity. Katrina—two men loved her until death. And you will never forget her.” God.’
‘Yes, well …’ I mumbled. There was no defence for paperback blurbs. I just hoped that the reading public was man enough to accept that publishers have a jargon of their own, like estate agents, which properly interpreted does no one any harm.
‘Who gets her in the end then?’ asked Gareth. ‘Godzilla or the ugly one?’
‘I’m not telling you,’ I said.
‘For Pete’s sake, Ma, I’m not going to read it.’
‘Sholto gets her.’
Clara pushed her chair back with a screeching sound. ‘And they lived happily ever after at Knot’s Landing.’
‘Out!’ I cried, brandishing a copy of FFL. ‘Out, out, out! And Clara, put Stu in the loosebox, the blacksmith is supposed to be coming.’ I would not have thought it possible for my morale to rise any higher, but on taking a further, undisturbed look at FFL, it did so. I was a writer, and here was the solid, irrefutable, printed proof. The phrase ‘latest bestseller’ was balm to my soul. I had a body of work, and today it had grown by one more volume. These few cubic inches of paper and coloured cardboard were my passport to the real world, my claim to an identity beyond that of involved village matron.
What’s more, FFL would be my passport this morning to The Rickyard, Fore Street. Thoughtful soul that I was, I should take a signed copy over for Constantine’s mother. I glanced at my watch. But not just yet. A little later, and surgery would be over.
I zoomed upstairs and assaulted the tripewriter. The under-gardener—his name was Jamie, the working classes always used diminutives—in the process of giving Maria the good hiding she so richly deserved, had discovered that she was not what she seemed.
‘God’s blood, ’tis a maid!’ he gasped, as Maria’s thick dark hair cascaded down her back, and her all-too-womanly body sprang to meet his rough hands as they ripped the leather waistcoat. ‘ ’Tis Miss Trevelyan!’
‘That is so!’ hissed Maria, glad of the darkness that hid her burning face, and the tears of humiliation which stung her eyes. ‘And you are too quick to strike, sir, when it is your safety that I seek!’
‘My safety?’ She heard the bafflement in his voice now, and his hands, which had gripped her shoulders like a vice, became gentler. ‘How so?’
‘I am dressed thus to pass by our enemies unnoticed, and to carry word to the King’s men at Bradbury. Thanks to you we might both have been killed! Now will you let me pass?’
She was trembling with fury, but as she tried to wrench free of his grasp and to catch up her flowing hair, he held her more firmly and then drew her close against him, so that her heart, like a captive bird, pounded against his.
‘By all that’s holy, you have spirit, Maria Trevelyan …’ he whispered as his hard, demanding mouth came down on hers.
It was all over bar the shouting. Only the fridge was missing. I didn’t even bother with the asterisks. And then Maria was on her way, much emboldened after this mid-flight refuelling, leaving Jamie to button his flies in the shadow of the house.
I put on the yellow shorts and top which had proved so successful at the weekend and went downstairs. Declan was in the garden, hoeing, but feeling that an exchange with him might tarnish my excellent spirits, I simply shouted that I was going out for a while, and set off on Gareth’s racing bike, with the copy of FFL clipped to the back. The hard, narrow seat of the bike bore a quite striking resemblance to those parts of Constantine with which I had intimate acquaintance, and as I dismounted and tottered to the front door, I conjured with his address … The Prickhard, Fore Play … Ah me, but the creative imagination was a wonderful thing.
On this occasion Anna Ghikas answered my ring almost at once. She wore designer jeans and a white collarless shirt. I experienced again that slight twinge of inferiority, but comforted myself with my secret.
‘Hallo!’ she cried, opening wide the door in the most welcoming way, ‘Come in and have a glass of wine—I am.’
‘Are you sure? I’m not disturbing you?’
‘From what, my dear?’ she tossed over her shoulder as she led me into the living room. ‘No, I’m off on the old wreck trail in Turkey the day after tomorrow.’
A wine box stood on the table among piles of books and papers. The marmalade cat sat on the window seat in the position George called ‘shouldering arms’, washing itself.
‘You’re in the middle of packing up,’ I said.
‘Yes, and how nice to get an excuse to stop.’ She fetched a second glass from the corner cupboard, and furnished us both with a shot of Medium White Table.
‘Kostaki tells me he saw you the other day.’
‘Yes.’
‘At the football, wasn’t it? I’m awfully glad you got him involved in that, he’ll enjoy it and it will keep him out of mischief.’
‘It’s very good of him.’
‘He likes to keep his hand in.’
‘I noticed that.’
‘Come and sit down.’ She led me out on to the patio and we sat down.
‘I thought you might like this,’ I said, handing over FFL, inscribed more informally this time: ‘ To Anna, from Harriet, with love’.
She took it with an expression of delight. ‘Oh, look at this, how simply gorgeous! And you simply couldn’t have brought it at a more opportune moment. I absolutely devour books when I’m working. All those long hours in the tent, usually with some obscure affliction of the digestive tract. Flight from Love, what fun, and t
he American edition, too! But your covers don’t do you justice, do they?’
‘You’re polite to say so.’
‘No, no, no, your books are nothing like so obvious as their covers suggest.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Kostaki’s not here, I’m afraid,’ she went on, setting the book aside and displaying an unnerving awareness of where my true interest lay. ‘ But he usually turns up around lunchtime.’
‘Oh, I’m not hanging about getting under your feet,’ I said firmly. I could wait. Just about. ‘I just cycled over to give you this. When did you say you were off?’
I could remember perfectly well, but it was still nice to hear her say it again. I was beginning to see The Prickhard in a new light, as the empty, private pleasure palace, child-free and pet proscribed, in which Constantine and I might rattle fridges and assault posture springing to our hearts’content. I felt positively affectionate towards Anna Ghikas.
I rose and held out my hand. ‘ I do hope your Turkish expedition will be a success,’ I said warmly.
‘Thank you, my dear. The tricky part is the raising of the mast.’
Only for some, I thought. ‘Please get in touch when you get back,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’ll have another book for you by then.’
I pedalled back to Magna with a light heart and a damp crotch. The slight delay in the making of my arrangements was actually rather titillating. I did not go straight home, but cycled instead the extra hundred yards to Stu’s field, to see if Terry Billings had arrived.
To my surprise his orange Ford Anglia with the foam rubber dice in the rear window was parked by the stable door. Of all the Little Men, Terry was the least reliable. Only the severe dearth of blacksmiths in the Basset area made it possible for him to remain in business. Not only was he unpunctual, but cross-eyed as well, which you would have thought was a serious defect in a blacksmith. I lived in the not entirely frivolous expectation of seeing a horse pass by with a horseshoe nailed to its knee.
Terry was a stout, middle-aged Teddy boy in whom a slim and sultry James Dean struggled to get out. Even now as I parked my bike and approached the loosebox I could hear Eddy Cochrane delineating the ‘Three Steps to Heaven’ at full blast over the roar of the calor gas fire and the clash of hammer on nails.
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