The Girl Who Came to Stay

by Ray Connolly

‘Admit it, you’re a married man. And your wife is away with your seven children, holidaying with her parents.’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘You’re all the same, you men. Taking advantage of a sweet young girl, like me. And here’s me, never been kissed.’

  ‘But often pissed.’

  ‘A couple of times, that I remember. Not really drunk. Why do you have all these things … such a well equipped kitchen? And everywhere’s so neat! You tidy up?’

  Clare busying about and me laying the table. For two. Running a tea-towel around the rims of the wine glasses. Trace of lipstick coming off one, a guilty red smear. Quickly, another one while she isn’t looking. Mrs Pollock you’re getting careless, you and your dusters and polish and waxes that make the floors shine fit to break my neck upon, and Brillo pads and soap suds and red hands and Scottish Presbyterian contempt for my life of slothfulness. And now I’ve caught you out.

  ‘When I bought the house I threw a housewarming party, and everyone turned up with something for the kitchen. It was a bit like getting married but without the nuptial solace of a bride at night to keep me warm. Will you keep me warm, Clare? It can get terribly cold in winter in Kensington, when the winds blow off the Hyde Park tundra bringing ice and snow and baby seals. Woke up one morning last winter and found myself snowed in. Drifts ten feet deep all the way down to the High Street, and me with tennis rackets tied to my feet going down to get the papers in my navy blue sailor’s coat with the gold buttons that I got for eight pounds fifteen from the Army and Navy Stores.’

  ‘Why don’t you open a bottle of wine? And we’ll have a quick glass.’

  Twisting into a cork. ‘To the Kensington Tundra! Can never get used to the way Americans put icebergs in their sherry.’

  Clare fiddling with the dials. Shutting oven doors. Putting lids on saucepans. Licking fingers. Surveying table. Everything neat.

  ‘Shall I light the candles, Clare?’

  ‘Heavens, no. It’ll take a good hour and a half to cook.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Well—I thought you might find some diverting way of amusing me for an hour or so.’ Tongue between teeth, curving upwards over top hp. A sensuous little pink bud.

  ‘She’s a prick teaser, she took me half the way there … She’s a prick teaser, she took me half the way there.’ Laughing and singing, and now Clare into my arms, in the kitchen. While the passers-by peep in, and go sadly back to their bedsitters with their shillings for the gas.

  And for an hour or so we spent a cosy if not altogether physically satiating time playing games on the rug, in front of the electric fire upstairs in the living-room, just the red glow of the bars watching when and how that sweater came off. But not the jeans. Men on the moon there might be, but, lunar interference or otherwise, menstruation waits for no man. Nor woman either. Which, said Clare, was just as well, as she’d promised her mother, and wasn’t it time for supper, anyway.

  Clare carved and dished out, while I lit the candles and watched. And when, just before we sat down she said she felt a bit hot round the neck in this sweater of hers, I ran upstairs and found a clean shirt of blue with tiny white polka dots, which she quickly changed into, while I watched. And while she knew I watched. And then we both laughed. And she looked pretty and warm, in the red candlelight, and I watched our flickering shadows on the wall as they came together for a moment and then separated around the far sides of the table.

  ‘Hope it’s done all right,’ said Clare. And we smiled at each other some more, and took a few hefty bites. ‘What did you do today?’

  So I told her about my lunch with Stella and Paul and Polly Press-Studs, and how I’d come home and done some phoning and reading and then waited for her to come.

  ‘What did you read?’

  ‘A book called Games For Swinging Lovers.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘Illuminating.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘It’s about extra-marital sexual relations, in private and in groups. You know—wife-swapping.’

  ‘You mean it’s about orgies. Can I borrow it when you’ve finished it?’

  ‘Be wasted on you. I’ll get you a book on pre-marital relations. First things first.’

  ‘Just thought I might send it to my mother for Christmas, in case she gets the urge to go wandering into other people’s beds again some time.’

  A cloud of bitterness here and a furrow is deepening between her eyes. Clare’s knife sawing at our little duck’s breast with a murderous energy.

  ‘This is very nice. I mean it’s a lovely dinner.’

  ‘Really?’ Shining from such a little praise. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Where did you learn to cook? You’re full of surprises. I didn’t think middle-class daughters were taught to cook.’

  ‘When my parents separated I used to look after my father during the holidays. He had a housekeeper who’d come in and put things in the oven for him. But sometimes he seemed such a lonely man, and his food would always be either burned or underdone. So I tried to help. You know, I’d just do it two or three times a week. I think I was hoping that it would cheer him up, and take his mind off work. But he hardly ever seemed to notice. So there was me looking for fatherly affection and trying to bribe him into taking some interest in me, and there was he lost behind the evening paper. Oh Christ, let’s not talk about all that. Well, I mean, I don’t really think I did it for him at all. It was for me. I wanted him to be interested in me. He never sent me letters when I was at school. And when I phoned he’d never know what to say. He never had any bloody news. Oh God, it was so futile. Trying to buy some love … no, that’s not true—just some fatherly interest. I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But it does. To you. And to me, too, in a way.’

  ‘Mmmm. Hardly likely. Let’s talk about something else. And are you always so tight with the wine?’

  Refilling her glass to the top. ‘What did you do today then?’

  ‘Gave up nursing.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘No. I wrote them a letter. Dear Matron, As you must well know by now my vocational interests, if any, lie in directions other than those of healing the sick. So if you don’t mind I’m leaving. Love to all the crippled and the lame. Yours ever… Well, perhaps not quite like that. But I did write to say that I’d decided to give it up.’

  ‘Can you do that? Don’t you sign indentures or something? Isn’t it breaking the Hippocratic oath? Anyway I thought you said they were short-staffed at St Jude’s.’

  ‘I don’t care if they’re bloody well short-staffed. I fully expect there to be a bit of a stink about it. Letters to my father and all of that. But what can they do about it? I’m just not going back to St Jude’s. Anyway, what’s the matter with you? I thought you’d be pleased. Surely Benedict Kelly wouldn’t want his girlfriend to be a nurse? Hardly fits the image, does it?’

  ‘Fuck the image.’

  Now here we go again. Falling out. Squabbling like children. Clare looking fed up, swinging back her second glass of wine. Pour her some more. Oh Christ, don’t start sulking. ‘No, Clare. All I mean is that it’s a very sudden decision to make. But if you really hated it so much then I suppose you’ve done the best thing.’

  And now don’t be petulant, little girl. Give up your job if you want to, I don’t care. All the more time to spend with me. Pity it isn’t summer, then we could have loafed our lives away together to a nice Ambre Solaire tan out there in the back garden. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll look for something else. I don’t know. You’ll help me, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes yes. But what about the hostel? Will you be thrown out and told never to darken their door again?’

  ‘No. It isn’t connected with the hospital at all. All the same I’m going to look for a bedsitter first thing in the morning. I want to be free of Cromwell Road, too.’

  ‘But what about money—which reminds me,
I must pay you for all of this. How will you manage? Of course I can help…’

  ‘I can dip into a deposit account. I have a bit put to one side, and I’ll manage on that until you find me a job. As for tonight, I’m treating you.’

  Me reaching for the camembert and crackers. Clare standing over the coffee percolator watching the little ejaculations hitting the Pyrex lid and draining back through the colander of holes. Giggling a bit: ‘Perk … perk … perk. Perk up, Benedict.’

  ‘You’re drunk, Clare.’

  ‘And I’m free. And happy.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s nice.’

  I poured the coffee while Clare took the elastic band from her pony tail, and shook her head so that hair covered her face and eyes. Then pushing it to one side like a curtain she propped her chin up with her fist and sat smiling. It was a pity about the nursing. It would have been nice to have had a girlfriend who could nurse me through my hypochondriacal tantrums. A cool hand on the brow. Instant prognoses. Cocoa when I’m poorly. Bed made with hospital regulation thoroughness, like sleeping in a strait) acket. And is there not something extraordinarily sexual about those clean little girls in blue and white, all starched and scrubbed? And spotless, too. I love a clean woman. Always wanted to grab hold of one of them there and then and do something for which I would no doubt get gaoled, or congratulated upon, depending upon the tastes and appetites of the young lady involved. Glamorous as they might be, those girl-guide air hostesses have nothing on our nubile young nurses when it comes to getting a man like me going. Not even the Air France ones, with their delicious bosoms and bandy legs, serving half a carafe of wine in the second class.

  And now here’s Clare smiling right through me. A waif and a stray, if ever I found one. No home that she wants to go to. No job. And no love for anyone, unless, I hope, a little for me.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner? We should celebrate.’

  ‘We are celebrating. And I wasn’t sure how you’d take it. I don’t really know what I mean by that. But I thought you might think it was because of you, or something like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Such conceit! Well—yes. And no. You were the factor that pushed me into the decision. I should have been on at half past seven this morning. And last night I just lay awake thinking, and dreading the moment when the alarm would go off. I was in such a state that I didn’t want to go to sleep because it would bring St Jude’s nearer. And I think I decided then. When it did go off, I just squashed my hand out to stop the row and turned over. Jill, she’s the girl I share with, thought there was something wrong and got out of bed to see if I wasn’t ill or something. She’s at secretarial college and a very-worthy girl. A little suburban mouse, who goes home every Friday and cries when she gets back on Sunday nights. She’d be pathetic if she wasn’t so sweet. Hey, any more wine, Benedict? Come on.’

  ‘You’ve had enough, you drunken sod.’

  ‘That’s a nice thing to call your new girlfriend.’

  ‘Whoever decided you were my girlfriend?’

  Not too drunk to be slighted, are you, Clare? Immediate withdrawal. Face stiffening. And looking so lonely. Playing with a salted biscuit, and wheeling it along the table like a thin rusty wheel. ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ she says.

  ‘I’m teasing you, Clare. Let’s go back to our rug by the fire. Would you like some more wine?’

  ‘No. You’re right. I’ve had enough.’

  A young girl, so easily hurt. And a giddyness so quickly dispelled. And now a shirt, my shirt, so easily undone.

  ‘I love you, Clare.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  But it would be nicer if you’d tell me you loved me, too.

  Still, I like a reticent lady. Shows a certain dignity, which is not overcommon these days among young women. Haven’t I been told how much I’m loved a hundred times by all manner of tarts and trollops, actresses and models, ladies of professional prettiness? And wouldn’t I spit in their eyes were they to approach me at any time other than when I’m down? And now, here on this nice thick and comfortable rug by the fire, I do believe I’m a little merry myself. Which is not that usual for me.

  ‘Tell me about your other boyfriends, Clare.’

  Clare lying back across the rug, her head resting on an orange cushion, knees up and together. Shirt undone now to the waist, navel trying to peer over the top of her leather belt, while I busy myself stroking and kneading her breasts. See how round they are, two bullseyes, when the weight is taken off them and they can lie back and relax like this. And watch how the nipples are becoming erected now. Little nozzles off grease guns, while all around your breasts spread to the edge of your body, tumuli at the end of the Apennine Way of your ribs. See how a glass of wine or two makes a poet of me. Ribs so easy to count, yet you’re not particularly thin, Clare. Now her eyes are shut, and me lying beside her, with my head down, too, on the edge of the cushion, my left hand tracing the line of her collar bone.

  ‘Tell me about your other boys, Clare.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like to think of me as your girlfriend.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I said I was teasing. Have you been out with many men?’

  ‘Not really.’ She deliberately takes my hand from her body, and begins pulling her shirt together, buttoning it slowly.

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘Why do you want to know? I don’t think it matters.’

  ‘I want to know everything about you.’

  ‘If I tell you about the few boys I’ve been out with, will you tell me about all your women?’

  ‘D’you want to know?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ Yawning. Turning on one side, back to the fire. Opening eyes to face me. There’s not much to tell about me. I’ve had a very sheltered life. So far. My mother made me promise not to talk to strange men. And I didn’t.’

  ‘You spoke to me.’

  ‘You weren’t strange—and you weren’t much of a man. Just a sad little out-patient with no one to look after him. My mother didn’t warn me about sad little out-patients.’

  ‘With wandering hands.’

  ‘Ha. I think all boys, little, big and middling must have wandering hands. Fortunately.’

  Leaning up to kiss me. Lips damp with wine. Fortunately, she said. Fortunately. Fortunate that it’s fun to be felt, by acquaintances casual and close. Makes no difference. Is there any part of any woman less publicly charted and measured, felt and fumbled with, discovered and aroused than those parts we call private? The pubic parts are public, not private, property. How can I be jealous? Jealous that Clare is a normal girl with normal appetites? Jealous, yet she’s still a virgin. But I am jealous. It’s madness but it’s true.

  ‘Fortunately? Yet you’re a virgin.’

  ‘That’s different. Well—I used to think it was.’

  ‘Tell me about the men you’ve been—fortunate, with?’

  ‘Benedict, this is an inquisition. Why on earth do you want to know?’

  And truly I don’t know, Clare. But I do know that it hurts so much to find that you’ve known excitement with other than me. Although I couldn’t possibly expect anything else. Just to dream of the time when we didn’t know each other hurts me, to imagine you in the back-seat of someone’s car, windows steamed up, legs spreading across the leather for comfort and excitement, skirt up, pants loose, petting at parties, bedroom doors locked, and the local lads saying she’s great as far as she goes, which can be quite a distance, though not all the way. Jealousy lancing me. Yet see how excited it makes me. And how long is it since I wondered about other men? Not since Cathy, though I’ve hardly been a celibate soul all these years. And now I’m bursting at my Y-fronts, testing the copper rivets of my denims. And the double stitching. Come here, Clare. Now. Taking her head off the cushion, and rolling her under me. And kissing her. Lying over her. But no. Clare is wriggling free.

  ‘Not tonight. Please. I really don’t feel like it.’

  A
nd so we lay back, she on my arm, and stared at the ceiling, turned mauve by the light of the fire, and I thanked her for coming into my life. Though in my mind she won an ovation for existing. And by and by I took her home.

  Chapter Eight

  Suzy was wrong about Mary Jane Tinhorn on three accounts, but then its a PR’s prerogative to be wrong. Firstly she wasn’t staying at the Dorchester, but had borrowed an elaborately fitted seduction suite from a well-known American nightclub owner who was widely reputed to organise the best July 4 and Thanksgiving orgies in Mayfair; secondly she was not on this occasion accompanied by her agent and friend Felix Yanov IV (T swopped him for a first edition autographed copy of The Sensuous Woman/ she was later to joke) and thirdly she was not particularly attractive. But, on the other hand, she was not really unattractive, and although the layers and twirls of soaring and cascading bouffant blonde hair may have made her look like Miss Las Vegas 1962, and although she clearly had borrowed her eyelashes from some sorely abused distemper brush, and although her cheeks were just a bit blotchy, bloated and pallid, I would have been a liar to myself if, armed with her volume of extra-marital experiences, I’d not found myself just a little sexually intrigued.

  The original plan had been that I was to do the interview over lunch, and I’d accordingly booked a table in the quieter recesses of Inigo Jones, where the clatter of dishes was so muffled as not to interfere overly with my portable tape-recorder. But at 12.30 on the Tuesday lunch time, Suzy the PR had called with a change of plans.

  ‘Benedict? Benedict, darling? I’ve just been talking to Mary Jane Tinhorn—ah, you know—the girl you’re going to have lunch with—you did remember, didn’t you, well yes, well, look darling, the poor girl is so tired that she wondered if she could possibly skip the lunch and see you about four at the place she has in Grosvenor Square. I mean, is that awfully inconvenient? She only got in this morning on the overnight plane from New York, and she’s suffering from jet fatigue. Are you sure that will be all right? You do understand, don’t you? Oh, you are a dear. Oh, and by the way, Benedict, would you mind awfully if I don’t turn up for the introductions? No? Oh super, dear. I have to dash off to Rome tonight for a couple of days. Bye darling. Have a super interview. Bye.’