by Stef Penney
‘I could have sworn I was writing a letter . . .’
Flora catches her breath, exhilarated, but wondering whether she actually liked it. After the last couple of days, she is sore, which was all very well when she was alone, smugly congratulating herself, but now . . .
‘You insult me and debauch me . . .’
Jakob slides off her and his fingers stray over her belly to the dark, raw place between her thighs. She stays his hand.
‘Darling? Are you all right? What is it?’
‘Ah . . .’ She allows her eyes to unfocus to the point where she can believe she isn’t saying this. ‘It just . . . stings a little.’
‘Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me? Forgive me . . . Oh, God!’
She has to laugh. ‘I forgive you. Can we just . . . ?’
‘Of course, darling. Actually, I hurt too.’ He laughs, seemingly at himself, and lies back on the bed, grinning at the ceiling.
‘You don’t have to look so pleased with yourself.’
‘I don’t look pleased with myself!’ he protests, trying not to grin. ‘I look happy.’
Flora learns that she can feel unalloyed joy for whole minutes before it gives way to worry, fear, guilt or irritation. On waking in the middle of the night, she is convinced that the man sleeping beside her wishes her ill. What if his desire is not for her, but would be the same for any woman, and she is just the one who has thrown herself in his path? He must be a prolific seducer; his skill, his frankness surely attest to it. In fact, he is only pretending to sleep; he is plotting his disentanglement as he lies there. Or he will strangle her and steal her underclothes . . . When she wakes again, to daylight and relative sanity, and finds herself fitted so gently into the crook of his body, sees the look in his eyes, and his smile, she no longer believes that, but . . . still! What does she really know about him?
And when they make a rare excursion, to an art gallery, she is tense and fearful lest – no matter how unlikely – she is seen by someone who knows her. She stares fiercely at the paintings, trying to commit titles and names to memory, so that she can put them in a letter to Freddie and enflesh her alibi for staying longer in Liverpool than a few meetings about potted meat could justify.
Jakob, not realising that she is undertaking a task of such importance, mutters irreverent comments about the paintings, or points out a foible of a visitor’s demeanour. When she doesn’t respond, and ceases even to look at him, he falls silent. She glares at the posturing allegories and drooping maidens, chestnut-hued and unbelievable. She does not even like them.
They drift in silence towards a painting that is quite different. A chill, monochrome landscape with areas of darkness and ragged white mountains, it reminds Flora of the landscape near Godthåb, after autumn snowfall, looking across the fjord of black water. Close to, she sees tortured birches, and eerily beautiful figures of young women floating above the ground, hair spiralling around them as though drowning in air, tangled in sheets that reveal their nubile bodies. The title of the painting is The Punishment of Lust.
Jakob reads it. ‘Well,’ he murmurs, ‘it doesn’t look so bad.’
Jolted with shame and embarrassment, Flora turns and walks away.
‘Did you really think I would be here?’ she asks.
Flora has pulled him into the crook of her shoulder. With a finger, he traces a contour around her right breast.
They have weathered their first disagreement. As a result, she feels they have reached a deeper, sweeter understanding.
‘Here? No. I hoped I might see you in London, but beyond that, I had no idea . . .’
‘I didn’t know if you would even reply to my note. I thought perhaps I’d misconstrued what happened in Neqi.’
‘You didn’t misconstrue.’
Flora pulls herself away so that she can look into his face.
‘It was the strangest thing. Even with the others there, I felt as though a light had come on – and it shone only on us. And I was sure that you knew . . . It sounds silly.’
‘No, it doesn’t. I felt the same thing. I knew you were thinking of me in the same way I was thinking of you.’
‘Oh? What way was that?’
He grins. ‘I don’t mean like that. Of course, ever since I met you in Siorapaluk, I knew, but that was different.’
‘Knew what?’
He lowers his face so that only his eyes are visible over her breast.
‘That I wanted to be your lover.’
The word shocks her; she is unused to hearing such words. They are as inflammatory as his touch.
‘I don’t suppose I was the only one. Everyone talked about you. To see a young woman, so competent and experienced . . . it was astonishing. We couldn’t believe it.’
He rubs his upper lip across her nipple until it stiffens, takes it delicately in his mouth. Flora is suddenly appalled by his energy, his competence. His experience. Experience with whom? One of a thousand things she doesn’t know.
‘Well, you’ve got what you wanted,’ she says.
‘Flora?’ He lifts his head and looks at her, but her face is turned to the window.
She doesn’t speak, because she doesn’t know what to say.
‘What is it? Flora, tell me.’
She shakes her head, and feels with fury the heat of tears just behind her eyelids. ‘Nothing.’
‘Clearly it isn’t nothing. Tell me, I would not hurt your feelings for the world.’
Flora pulls herself into the far corner of the bed, draws her knees up and wraps her arms round them. She looks at the window.
‘That is the trouble with . . . sex.’
He looks away from her and doesn’t speak for a minute.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It doesn’t listen. Your body goes on behaving one way, when . . . when you have feelings that . . .’
She takes a ragged breath. Jakob pulls himself up to sit beside her, without touching her.
‘Feelings that what?’ His voice is flat.
‘I know . . . I knew . . . It doesn’t matter, but . . .’
He sighs. ‘You knew what? Wait a minute, I’m going to smoke.’
He gets out of bed and pads across the room to where his jacket was cast on to the floor. She can’t help but look at his bare back with the dimples above his pelvis, his buttocks with their lovely, shadowed hollows, the dark pouch between his legs – he seems unconcerned by his nakedness. The bedsprings creak as he sits back on the mattress.
‘What did you know?’
‘Just . . . I knew you must have . . . done this sort of thing before, and when you said about the others, about being my lover . . .’
She can’t quite put the shameful thoughts into words. Jakob expels a stream of smoke at the ceiling.
‘“This sort of thing”? Do you think that I’m going to boast of my conquest of you? Before moving on to the next one – is that it?’
She moves her head sharply. It sounds so ugly.
‘No. But . . .’
‘But what? You seem to have a very low opinion of me.’
‘No! I’m trying to explain. I’ve never done this before, and you . . . have. They always say it’s different for men. You . . . know what to do. When you touch me, I can’t think. But I hardly know you. How do I know what your life is?’
‘I will tell you. What do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know how you live! You could be married, or engaged . . . I wouldn’t know!’
‘Of course I’m not married! Nor am I engaged. In New York, I live with my brother – you know that. Haven’t we corresponded for the last three years? I have been to bed with women before; I’m thirty years old and I’m not a monk. But there is no one at home. And you are married, Flora . . .’
‘You know what my marriage is. An
d I’m afraid.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘I’m afraid that, after this, I won’t be able to go back to what my life was. And that you will.’
Jakob picks a stray piece of tobacco from his tongue. It is the thought that neither has yet dared speak aloud. He throws his cigarette (minor, auspicious victory) into the fireplace. ‘Why do you assume I want to go back to what my life was? Do you think I’m just a . . . a libertine?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. Are you?’ She tries to look light-hearted.
Jakob is annoyed. ‘If I say no, will you believe me?’
‘I have no experience of this!’
‘Are you afraid because I have experience?’
She nods.
‘But experience is just the past. It is past. You are the present, Flora . . . and I would like you to be the future.’
Flora absorbs this. But her face shows nothing.
‘Why don’t you come and meet me in Switzerland?’
She smiles her slow, reluctant smile. He loves to watch it; from tiny beginnings, it rises up to possess her.
‘Before I catch the train, I’ll be in London for one or two nights. Will you meet me there?’
‘Don’t say that because you feel you ought to.’
‘I don’t say anything because I feel I ought to! I say it because I want to see you. I want to go on seeing you.’
‘I want to go on seeing you, too.’
He puts his hands on her shoulders and turns her towards him.
‘Shall I tell you the things I have not done before? I have never felt what I felt in Neqi – that connection that seemed to bind me to you. I’ve never crossed an ocean hoping to see a woman I barely know, but who has been in my head for three years . . . like a light.’
He strokes her hair, and traces a finger down the side of her face. ‘When you touch me, I can’t think. And I don’t want to be without you.’
Her face has softened, but she has stopped smiling. ‘I don’t want to be without you. I don’t know what that might mean.’
Neither of them can think, or will say, at this moment, what it might mean. But Flora kisses him, with the longing for reassurance, with relief; and with relief Jakob responds, and they begin to make love, even though neither really wants to, because doing so means they can forget and procrastinate, because, in the end, no matter how passionate or accomplished or tender, it is a sequence of repetitive and simple actions, and difficult decisions are not required.
When they walk out in the sunshine of that afternoon, Flora wears a blue dress that makes her skin glow. The knowledge of their lovemaking surrounds her like a cloak. They find a restaurant that looks suitably grand to appeal to their fancy. There are white tablecloths that crumple on to the oxblood carpet, shoals of silver cutlery, clusters of crystal. The menu is in French. They choose a corner away from the window. There are not many other diners at this hour, but perhaps there were not many earlier; it is expensive. Flora picks up the menu and studies it as though she were rehearsing a part. Her lips are pressed together in that look she adopts; to the outside world, it appears either that she disapproves of something, or that she is trying not to laugh. Even now, he cannot decide which it is.
‘I don’t understand most of it,’ she says with a smile (in London, she would have been too embarrassed to admit this). ‘What do I want, dear? Do I want rognons or merlan?’
‘I don’t know about merlan. Rognons are kidneys.’
‘Hmm. Then . . . I will have the tournedos. That is steak, isn’t it? Very rare.’
Jakob does something he has never done before and orders oysters and champagne. The napkins are enormous and stiffly starched – like snowy mountains. They eat oysters and she tells him that she left school when she was twelve; the university only accepted her because of her notoriety. He tells her about the Koppels. Although the account is grim, he is cheerful and funny. Flora longs to put her arms round him, but since she can’t, she presses her leg against his under the table. The beef arrives and she saws into it, blood running on to the plate. She picks up a chunk on her fork.
‘It makes me think of Greenland.’
‘I’d like to go there with you.’
She looks up, moved.
‘If I could come to Switzerland . . . would you really like it? I wouldn’t want to be in your way.’
She watches him, to gauge his reaction. He puts down his fork and takes her hand.
‘I would like that more than anything.’ He doesn’t smile. ‘Do you believe me?’
She nods.
.
They order dessert – Jakob orders lemon tart; Flora, îles flottantes. She has had it once before, and it seemed to her – a pudding without flour, fruit, or even a good, honest flavour – to embody Continental decadence in the highest degree. When it arrives, she looks down at the smooth white mounds emerging from a yellow sea and wants to laugh; they seem ludicrously, erotically suggestive.
‘Is it all right?’ he asks.
The slippery soft stuff melts in her mouth, tasting of nothing, but suggesting much. On an impulse, she eases one foot out of her shoe, then, concentrating on her plate, works her foot on to Jakob’s chair and between his thighs. He sits up with a jerk at first touch – she looks up questioningly – then looks sternly at his plate. She pushes her foot into his groin, finds it already half hard, and tries not to smile.
‘How is your tart?’ she asks.
‘Good,’ he says thickly, and adjusts the napkin over his lap.
She puts another spoon of meringue into her mouth and squeezes it to nothing against her palate. She pushes against his hardening prick, feels it throb against her sole, and a wave of heat washes through her. He takes another mouthful, looks as though he is thinking of something far away. She feels faintly hysterical.
In the room at the Victoria, he unwraps her like a longed-for present, peeling off layer after layer of clothing. He undoes each ribbon, each button, with measured care. They don’t speak; they are heavy and languorous with food and champagne. He moves round her, touching her so lightly his hands feel like lace. She shivers, but not with cold. His touch is so restrained and precise, she can hardly bear it; she feels something hot run down her thigh. He lays her on the bed like a precious garment. She watches him strip off his clothes and climb over her. He kneels, spreads her, looking down at her gravely for a long moment, then he lifts her hips and enters her with a rush that makes her cry out in surprise. It hurts less now, but the initial thrusts are still uncomfortable. Looking down, he watches himself withdraw, very slowly, right to the tip, then plunge in again with a groan. She looks down her body to see this take place; this masculine sleight, a magic trick: he appears and disappears. She shifts and her legs wind around his body. It is no longer uncomfortable. Encompassing him, taking him inside her body to keep, she digs her nails into his buttocks and he moves more urgently, stirring her in great circles, and she feels as though she is coming apart. He quickens, quickens, and his body clenches above her like a fist. It looks as though it hurts him. When he collapses on her, his skin glazed with sweat, his heart thumps so hard against her breastbone she is afraid he will have a heart attack. Or it is her heart. He rolls off her at last, panting like a runner.
She feels wetness in her eyelashes, in the hair at her temples. When they have breath enough to speak, they whisper words to each other across the damp pillow: promises they have no idea if they can keep.
Chapter 31
Zermatt, 46˚1’N, 7˚45’E
May–July 1895
You enter a porch, pillared by icicles, and look into a cavern in the very body of the glacier, encumbered with vast frozen bosses which are fringed all round with dependent icicles. At the peril of your life you may enter these caverns and find yourself steeped in the blue illumination of the place. Their beauty is beyond description
, but you cannot deliver yourself up, heart and soul, to its enjoyment. There is a strangeness about the place which repels you, and not without anxiety do you look from your ledge into the darkness below.
Monsignor Rendu, Memoirs (1841)
What effort of the imagination could transcend the realities here presented to us?
John Tyndall, The Glaciers of the Alps (1860)
Jakob stands on the edge of the Gornergletscher in the pre-dawn gloom of a May morning. It is overcast, and the world is softly monochrome. He adjusts the screws of the theodolite until satisfied that the lines are exact, then holds up his arm. Out on the glacier, the little figure that is Otto pushes a stake into the snow and hammers it in with great blows of a mallet, which echo in the still air. Otto makes the signal that confirms it is done, then strides an agreed number of paces to position the next stake. On the other side of the glacier is a vertical slab of rock. Yesterday, he and Otto clambered up the rock to paint a line on it. Theodor stood at the bottom, shouting excitedly up at them. There is a similarly distinct marker behind Jakob. He bends over the eyepiece, readjusts it, makes hand signals.
He enjoys this work; it is soothingly precise and repetitive. And the surroundings are peerless. The clouds are moving, now. Dry snow squeaks under his boots. The grey of the dawn is slowly lifting; a blush of colour and light pulls their eyes upwards, to the mountain tops. The ice is deep and calm beneath them, creaking and grumbling like a sleeping animal.
Otto hammers in the last stake as the sun climbs over the shoulder of a mountain – which one is it? The Strahlhorn? Or the Rimpfischhorn? Jakob can’t remember, but just turning over the names in his mind makes him grin. Otto waves again. Although he is so far away, Jakob thinks he can see his huge smile. In the east, the sky ignites. Buttery light crowns the great crumpled obelisk of the Matterhorn.