by Ray Connolly
‘She started getting them out of her rucksack, and laid them out on her sleeping bag.’
‘Then what?’
‘Well, I don’t really know, I remember we were both studying one dirty great chunk of granite that looked like every other bit of rock you ever saw in your life, and she was shining her torch on it and muttering things in German with great enthusiasm, and the next minute she was pinning me to the floor, and muttering other things in German with great enthusiasm.’
‘What things?’
‘Don’t know. I don’t understand German. But I got the message when she began devouring me, and me lying with my neck being spliced open by a jagged chunk of millstone grit. Very uncomfortable it was. Anyway we soon reversed positions, which was much better so far as I was concerned, and with the help of her torch, and after much huffing and puffing, I completed my first act in the craft of lovemaking.’
‘Whose idea was it that you make love?’
‘Christ. Hers, of course. I’d have been terrified. She practically had to rape me. Well, perhaps not rape, but I was a bit shy and needed some encouragement.’
‘I’ll bet. Were you naked?’
‘Oh, Clare, this has gone far enough.’
‘No, come on, you’ve enjoyed telling me so far. Let’s have the whole thing.’
Suddenly the story isn’t that funny any more. And I don’t want to talk about it. Not tonight. Particularly not tonight.
‘Well, no. It’s bloody freezing on the damp ground in the Lake District at any time of the year. So we only removed what was necessary.
‘With the help of her handy little torch…’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it nice?’
‘Actually, not really. I was very disappointed. I expect she was too. I was no Don Juan. And no sooner had we finished than I was off down the mountain to tell Jim all about it, who scoffed and said, “what, you’ve only had one woman? What have you been doing half the night?” Now that’s it. Can we talk about something else?’
Clare laughing. Incredibly, she really enjoyed the story. No sign of jealousy. Had the positions been reversed, had she been telling me about some bloke she’d been with, I’d have been screwing my heart out with jealousy and rage.
‘You’re a funny fellow. So incredibly innocent. I know you’re more than ten years older than I am, but sometimes I feel much older. When I first met you I thought you’d be tough and sophisticated; you may know all the right people and move in the right circles, but you’re not a bit tough, though you try to pretend you are when you’re with people like Paul.’
‘Which would you rather have—the strong silent type, or the quiet weak type then?’
‘Your type suits me. Without the showy bits.’
‘I’ll try to correct them.’
Both eating and drinking now in aimless conviviality: conversation just for the sake of conversation. Now and again I catch sight of a middle-aged man with a blond moustache on the nearest occupied table allowing his eyes to wander from the lady he’s with and rest upon Clare. Admiringly, I think, and I’m flattered that my girl should be the object of such attentions. Yet I can understand why. Just look at her there, so self confident, that tiny mole on her neck jumping and bobbing as she eats and swallows, and those nostrils, so neat and clean and round, that I first noticed so long ago in St Jude’s.
‘You look very pretty, Clare. Well—beautiful, really…’ Strange how bashful I am tonight.
Clare pulls a curious face that pushes the corners of her lips down and screws up her nose disdainfully, unsure of what to do with my compliments.
Coffee, sir? Yes. And a cognac? Me, no. Clare, yes. Hine? Yes. And here they come with those little mints that we might sit and consider tonight. And though it’s silly I feel a little like a bridegroom. But now Clare’s changed her mind. Can we cancel the coffee and brandy? And go home now? Is that all right? Of course. And I’ll sign the cheque while you go off to the Ladies. Mind you don’t get lost in there, Clare, they tell me it’s very complicated.
Back in the car, soon be home. And now up the steps to get out of the perishing cold again. Here, let me take your cape. You’re frozen stiff. Let’s sit by the fire for a while. It’s still early, you could have your brandy and coffee here.
‘Come on, Benedict.’
Clare taking my arm and leading me upstairs to my room. Wait here. You wanted a sense of occasion, didn’t you, you silly man, and off she goes creaking up the next flight to her room. And me wondering if she’s changed her mind after all, half hoping she has, but checking in the bedside drawer to be sure I really did pack my balloons in there with which to christen this celebration. Then opening a packet, that I might not be caught with my fingers among the sheaths when they should be among the sheets. And now she’s back at my door and tapping to come in. Standing with her hair down now and wearing a white nightie. Going to her first communion, I think, and making a special occasion because I wanted one. Then into bed and pulling the covers close around her ears as protection from the cold. While from the window I watched her and slowly got undressed and slid alongside her. And waited, while she hid her head in my chest, and under my collar bone, that I might not kiss her yet, but must wait and hold her until she’s ready.
Then slowly she began to kiss me while I unlaced her night-dress. Had she meant it for a joke? The virgin’s white on the night of consummation? I wondered. But lifting her towards me I pulled it away from her arms and out from under her. And for a while I lay beside her until at length after fitting myself I touched her occasionally. And then more frequently. Until she pulled me close and said now, please Benedict, now. And I made love to her as sensitively and as fondly as I knew how, hoping and praying that she might be enjoying me and that I might not hurt her. And I wondered if she would be a family for me. You must be the man of the house they’d said when I was old enough to understand that my father was dead. There’s no other man. Only you. And then at eight when my mother had died, the message had come again. There’s no one to look after your grandma now. You must be a little man and take care of her. All of her family have gone and left her. She has no one. Nor me either. And on sad nights and February 15th every year, she would tell me that although she had six children and three were dead there was only one she dreamed about. And he was her first. Born in 1900. She’d called him Teddy. And at seventeen he sat and played on the bed with the younger children who were sick with chicken pox, hoping that he might become infected, and put off being shipped to the war in France. But he didn’t catch it, And he cried the night before he had to go. And on February 15 th the postman brought the news. And they had a mass said for our Teddy. And sometimes grandma would tell me about how Teddy fell in the canal and nearly drowned when he was eight, and she warned me never to go near any water, because I was her son now. I was her little boy, her little soldier, her little Teddy. And I was the man of the house, too. There were just the two of us. Just Clare and me. Together, side by side in bed. Clare’s arm resting on my shoulder while she whispered that I really was a very nice man, and outside the cars raced up the road on their short cut, and the street lights made patterns on the wall, until eventually she said good night, turned away and fell asleep. I stared at the windows and thought for a very long time about Teddy whom I felt I’d known like a brother. And once when Clare stirred uneasily in her sleep I turned to her and pulled the blankets closer round us both to protect her from the cold. And the war.
Chapter Eleven
‘It’s been snowing.’ Clare was standing by the bedroom window, watching the road, while a shower of light snow made a cold confetti for us and I searched among the pillows to find consciousness.
‘What are you doing out of bed? You’ll catch your death of cold over there.’ She was wearing my dressing gown, the white nightie still lying on the top of the covers where it had been left last night in the heat of the haste, and the chase of the chaste.
‘I was cold in bed. You pulled all the cover
s to your side, and I didn’t like to waken you. You looked so peaceful. And I didn’t know what reception I’d get if I were to pull them back over me.’
‘You’re a silly girl. Come back here at once.’
‘No. You come and see the snow. You’ll have to be quick because it’s already melting.’
Out of bed and into my pyjama pants; Clare still looking at the snow. Now I’m kneeling beside her, head against her thigh. Watching the shower, that has given the trees a slight dusting of Sno-Glo and seeing the cars splashing up occasionally through the tracks of slush, and the pock marks of dripping that are forming between the large wet footprints on the opposite pavement.
‘It’s too early to snow. It must be a freak shower. Have you been watching it long?’
‘No. I lay awake for a long time this morning, getting colder and colder, and then I noticed it swirling round the window. It always reminds me of Christmas.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘What do you do for Christmas, Benedict?’
‘Oh, me. Well it’s usually midnight mass followed by a dawn orgy, followed by lunch at Kensington Palace and coffee during the Queen’s speech, then I suppose it’s orgies right through until New Year. That’s the sort of fast-moving trendy world I move in. You too, now. You’ll soon pick it up.’
‘Pick what up?’
‘Depends upon your choice of partners, my love.’
‘Stop being silly. Tell me truthfully what did you do last Christmas Day?’
‘Oh well, let me see. To be absolutely honest I stayed here, and cooked myself a turkey, but started reading a book and by the time I’d got back it was burnt. So I had some toast and a bottle of wine for my Christmas lunch, which was actually not that bad, and I put what I could salvage of my turkey onto the toast. I was silly, really. Several people had said why didn’t I spend Christmas with them, but I would have felt like Little Orphan Annie turning up at a nice close family do, so I told them all I was going away. I remember by about four o’clock I was a bit depressed, when the friend of mine who runs this orphanage, you know, the bloke who keeps robbing me blind by sending all the pictures, well, he phoned and said that they were having a party, and if I hadn’t got anything else on would I like to go over. I think he must have known somehow. So I went down there, and we had jellies and cakes and played party games, and I wore a pink paper hat that said Kiss Me Quick or something like that. And a little Chinese-looking girl of about six kept demonstrating her reading ability by grabbing hold of me at every conceivable occasion. I really had a good time. Always fancied it the Oriental way ever since.’
‘Who is this friend who owns the orphanage?’
‘He doesn’t own it. Just runs it. His name is Timothy, once known as Father Timothy, but he dropped out of the priest-hood and married the most gorgeous bird man ever set his eyes upon. He’d been a Jesuit, and spent from the age of fifteen to twenty-seven in a seminary, but then three years after taking his final vows he decided he’d be a better man outside the magic circle and left. His wife is called Caroligne, and was a deb, I think, in the early sixties. Anyway, they managed to get themselves put in charge of this orphanage, and now they’re as happy as the day is long. They’re in Wimbledon.’
‘Are they good friends?’
‘To me? Well, I don’t see them very often. You know, we hardly move in the same circles. But I would think they’re just about my best friends. I’ll take you there some time. I’d like you to meet them.’
‘See, it’s turning to rain now.’ Clare was back to the meteorological situation, watching large lumps of melting sleet splashing into the windowpane like large flat wet crystals which immediately turned to water and made rivers down the glass.
‘Shall we go back to bed? It’s not nine yet.’
‘Will you promise to keep your lecherous hands off me?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Come on then.’ And she threw off my dressing gown onto a chair and hurdled back onto the bed, just a fraction ahead of me.
That was pretty much how we spent all of Sunday. Like children with a new toy, we were playing with it until it bored us. But it never did bore us. Each time seemed better than the last. And really I was amazed at my own virility. Around three there was a slight break for lunch, which since it was bacon and eggs was really breakfast, and then it was back to the tournament, jousting, jumping and racing under and over and around the sheets, while in between events there would be short periods of relaxation while the muscles toned up and the lungs refilled for later exertions. All day it rained and sleeted, and indeed bed was the best place to be during such inclement weather. Then at seven o’clock Clare said just once more and then let’s go out for dinner. Somewhere trendy rather than grand, now that the occasion, special though it was, is over. And so we went to Tramp’s, and looked at the faces, and whispered there’s so-and-so, and there’s what’s-her-name, fancy her being with him—thought she was happily married. We would have danced, if we hadn’t been so exhausted. And eaten more, if we’d had enough energy left. And so at midnight we went home, where Clare kissed me outside my room, and said:
‘Good night. Thank you for having me.’
And I said: ‘Good night. Thank you for coming.’
And then I watched her as she wearily climbed the stairs to her own room. Where I knew I couldn’t follow. And eventually went into my shambles of a bedroom, and lay for a long time wondering whether this was to be the nature of our relationship.
It was. She rarely spent a whole night with me, and often after making love I would feel her creeping softly from my room, to return to her sanctuary, while I prayed that she might stay. When I would question her about it, she would shrug her shoulders, and smile, and say she slept better when she was alone, and anyway, hadn’t that been the understanding, that I would provide the bed and she would stop behaving like a board? Cheeky girl. But I never pushed the matter. She made all the decisions about the pace our relationship took. She was the stronger party. And she knew it. And although she was never dictatorial, she insisted that I understand how it was to be. Occasionally, on invitation, I would visit her room. So cosy now. And feminine. With special blue sheets that I didn’t know she had, and pretty new curtains to match her counterpane. While on the dressing table by her bed was a picture of me, which she must have found lying around the house and had framed. In a way I could understand her reluctance to open up her own room to the rest of the house. It was her little corner to shelter in. To be quiet in. And it seemed to me that sometimes we all need one of them.
Clare started work for Paul on the Monday, off in her boots and calf-length skirt, swaying away up the road, not having eaten any breakfast but steadfastly denying that she was nervous, and straight away I got back to work. All of a sudden the will to work had returned and I was in the office by ten thirty, going through the mail, planning which film previews to see, arranging interviews, answering letters, telephoning contacts, explaining to Suzy how Mary Jane Tinhorn hadn’t really been in the right mood to be interviewed…
‘No, I guess not,’ said Suzy. ‘Did she tell you her plans?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, well, it just seemed so strange that right after seeing you she caught the first flight the next morning back to Los Angeles. And apparently Dick Pullatzer’s apartment is in a terrible mess. It sounds as though she must have had some kind of flood in there. And then fused all the lighting. Must have happened after you left.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, she certainly was a strange one.’
‘Yes.’
‘Apparently she’d daubed all kinds of words on the walls with her lipstick. Dick’ll have a fit when he gets home.’
‘Serves him right for trying to procure an innocent young thing like her. What sort of things did she write on the walls?’ For a moment panic hovered as I imagined my secret being circulated all over London.
‘Oh, it was strange. I didn’t see it, but Beryl went to see her the next day to
arrange some more interviews and came back with some story about “By the time I get to Phoenix I’ll be too late”. Funny, isn’t it?’
‘She always did like Glen Campbell.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Anyway, darling. I’m sorry things went so badly for you. By the way, are you better now? I called your office last week and they said you were ill, and I couldn’t get you at home.’
‘Oh yes. I’m fine.’
‘Oh good. Well, bye, honey. Speak to you soon.’
‘Bye bye, Suzy.’
Not a word written, but a busy day at the office. Organising, planning, thinking ahead, saying all the right things to all the right people. Lunch in a pub, cheese and bread and wine. No wonder half Fleet Street are either alcoholics or suffering from ulcers. This week everywhere seems a brighter place. Six o’clock, and rushing home on the tube. Clare already there. Busy in the kitchen. Shopping done. Eating in tonight, she says. Flushed with heat from the oven. A happy girl. Wiping the Formica tops, saying how we ought to get a new cupboard and some new crockery, and hurry up and get ready for dinner, this working girl’s starving to death.
‘How did it go?’
‘Not bad. Didn’t sell anything. But I tried to look useful. Actually, hardly anyone came in all day, so I just helped tidy up. Paul never came near, but Tibby’s been moved over to manage this shop for him. And before you ask, he hasn’t tried to make her yet. All right? I didn’t ask. She offered it. Obviously she thinks he’s as bent as you do.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Tibby? She’s nice. Once you get past all that trendy front, she’s quite sweet. We’re going shopping together on Thursday night. I seem to need so many things.’
‘Oh. That’s nice.’ And yet, Clare, I feel a sense, a sense so tiny I’m hardly aware of it, but a sense of loss. From now on, I’ll be sharing you. Just a fraction, maybe. But you’re still your own master, and though I’m glad you’ve found a friend, another part of me says I’m sorry I’ve lost a piece of you. But then I always was possessive. Don’t go to work, mum. Stay at home today. I can’t, love. I’ll be back at half past five. Wait for me by the window.