by H. E. Bates
‘I believe you’re trying to back out deliberately.’
Hartley Spencer, who was in fact desperately trying to do exactly this, stuttered that he was honestly doing no such thing, no such thing.
‘On your honour?’
‘On my honour,’ Hartley Spencer said, thus committing himself to an unprecedented, downright lie.
‘I don’t know whether to believe you or not.’
Agonized, he repeated that it was true, on his word of honour, word of honour.
In answer she leaned forward a little further and then suddenly, as if prompted by a sudden rush of modesty, gave the triangles that barely covered her breasts a slight hitch that merely had the effect of making them seem rounder, tauter and more conspicuous.
‘Well, I can tell you one thing, honour or not. You’ll be out of Kitty’s good books from now on. She won’t love you any more.’
The word love fell on him like a pain. More painful still, she drew attention to herself yet again by smoothing her hands up and down her honey-coloured thighs, causing him to say desperately:
‘I really think I must go now, Mrs La Farge. I’m really awfully sorry about – of course I’ll send you the cheque.’
‘Oh! no you don’t. Here comes Kitty.’
He turned to see Kitty O’Connor coming from the direction of the house dressed in a summer frock of geranium red, the taut sleeveless simplicity of which gave the impression that it was the only garment she was wearing.
He rose to greet her, only to hear Vanessa La Farge cause him further pain by saying:
‘Just in time, Kitty. He was on the verge of leaving. If you can believe such a thing.’
‘Bad man,’ Kitty said. ‘How could you, Mr Spencer?’
The slight pout she gave him was more provocative than any smile and he could find no word of answer. Vanessa La Farge found it instead and, laughing, said:
‘Entertain Kitty while I go and get dressed. I find it a little cool. That’s unless Kitty wants to swim?’
‘No, I’m quite happy talking to Mr Spencer.’
The mischievous simplicity of this remark wrapped him into a further tangle of confusion, out of which he temporarily extricated himself by hastily obeying Vanessa La Farge’s smoothly imperative order:
‘Get Kitty a drink. I’m sure she’d love one. Be a dear and be a barman.’
Hartley Spencer retired to the colonnaded bath-house shelter to be barman, preceded by the honey figure of Vanessa La Farge. There, while he mixed a long iced gin-and-French for Kitty O’Connor he was vastly disturbed by the voice of Vanessa La Farge calling from one of the dressing cubicles:
‘Mix me one too, will you? Lying in the sun always makes me thirsty.’
About half a minute later a naked honey-coloured arm reached out from the half-open cubicle door and her voice said:
‘Hand it to me will you, dear? I’m not quite ready to come out yet.’
As he prepared to hand over the gin-and-tonic Hartley Spencer found it impossible to resist the sensational impression that he was a mere few inches away from a completely naked female body. Her low ‘Thank you, darling’ seemed husky. Nor, for once in his life, could he escape the strong but indefinable scent of some anointing powder, oil or perfume that floated from the cubicle and he instantly recalled her remark on the insidious sensory effects of fragrances.
‘Don’t neglect Kitty, will you? I know she’s been dying to talk to you.’
He escaped to the pool with slight relief, only to find that Kitty O’Connor had moved herself to a stone garden seat, on which she was now sitting with knees drawn up, graceful stockingless legs fully revealed.
‘Not drinking?’ she said.
He confessed again that he’d had rather a late tea. A slight spasm or two of indigestion had in fact put him in occasional discomfort and he quickly suppressed a short low belch.
‘Cheers. And what marvellous ideas have you been cooking up for Vanessa?’
Miserably he had once again to confess his regretful inability to help at the fête. She at once uttered a blasphemous ‘Holy Mary, that won’t do at all. She’ll be broken-hearted. You might just as well clip the wings of an angel.’
The Irish exaggerations, delivered with a silken drawl, added further to the discomforts already brought about by naked limbs, insidious perfumes, indigestion and the fact of being repeatedly hailed as darling.
‘I’m most awfully sorry, but it simply can’t be helped. I simply must go to Manchester. It’s something I simply can’t get out of. Of course I’ve promised Mrs La Farge a cheque.’
‘And a mighty fat one, I hope.’ She patted the stone seat with the palm of her hand. ‘Anyway come and sit by me. Let’s be having a tête-à-tête before Vanessa comes.’
Wretchedly he sat on the seat, resigning himself to the uncomfortable prospect of the tête-à-tête. Gin-and-French in hand, Kitty O’Connor made no move to change her attitude on the seat and with legs still provocatively upraised begged him in a silky voice, and in the name o’ God:
‘Does this mean I’m going to be deprived of the privilege and pleasure of selling my wares to you?’
He could only take a long painful breath, with nothing to say.
‘You disappoint me terribly,’ she said. ‘I was looking forward to that. I thought you’d be my first customer.’
She started to wet her lips with her tongue. They immediately shone with the heightened geranium red of her dress. Then she looked dubiously, with a slight pout, into her glass and said:
‘You didn’t put more than a pint o’ gin in this, did you? Would you mind? I can’t feel a thing.’
Aware of having failed in a duty he went back to the bath-house, there to find Vanessa La Farge, bare-footed, wrapped in a yellow bath-towel, in the act of renewing her own gin-and-tonic, a feat made precarious by the fact that she had only one hand to pour the drink and one to hold up the bath-towel.
‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a barman,’ he said. ‘I was a little miserly with the gin.’
‘Oh! splosh it in. She likes it the full strength, our Kitty. Splosh it in.’
Dutifully he sploshed it in.
‘And be nice to her. You know what I said. About that conquest. I’ll be twenty minutes or more yet. I’ve got a couple of telephone calls to make –’
He returned to Kitty, who took the newly fortified drink, sniffed at it, laughed impishly, said that was more like the real McCoy and that he was the beautiful man.
Again the Irish exaggerations flowed silkily, leaving him mute. Her eyes smiled at him liquidly while his own again found no place in which to rest with any sort of ease.
‘Gin,’ she suddenly said after another deep drink or two, ‘always makes me amorous.’
Hartley Spencer, who had never drunk gin in his life and hadn’t ever thought of its amorous properties either, could only stare at the blue still water of the pool.
‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘and how many guineas’ worth can I sell you?’
‘I don’t think we need make any sort of transaction. I’ll gladly give just the cheque –’
‘Here, that’s not very flattering to me!’
‘Oh! I apologize. I didn’t mean it quite like that.’
Suddenly her eyes caught him unawares, fixing him with inescapable magnetism.
‘I tell you what. You can try just one. Just a tiny experimental one. A sisterly one if you like. If you don’t care for it, I’ll take the cheque and put the rest away.’
Suddenly she seemed to slide along the seat towards him, at the same time patting one end of it with her hand in invitation.
‘Sit,’ she said, ‘sit,’ and he obeyed like a dog.
A moment later a great warm profound cloud of confusion enveloped him. Her lips rested with a light but distinct ardour on his. At the same time she touched his cheek, also lightly, with one hand, and with the other held him firmly by the shoulder, so that there was no chance of his escaping.
The kiss
, over in a few seconds, terrified him so much that it might have been of a night’s duration. He was about to splutter an expression of something between relief and protest when she laughed and said:
‘Oh! you can do better than that. Surely to God you can do better than that.’
In the moment before her arms completely enveloped him he wildly remembered Vanessa La Farge’s words about conquest and felt himself to be vainly and desperately struggling against the surge of a waterfall.
This time her lips were loose and sensuous. She moved them caressively, with infinitely gentle compulsion, from side to side. Then to his ultimate horror she grasped one of his hands and lifted it to the curve of her bosom, so that for the first time in his life he found himself incredibly and fearfully aware of the shape of the female breast.
It shattered him so much that he almost wrenched himself away, confusedly protesting, only to find that she was equally unwilling to let him go.
‘That was better,’ she said. ‘That was grand.’
‘Miss O’Connor, do you mind, I –’
‘I believe you’re the dark horse. Vanessa’ll be raving jealous when I tell her –’
The ultimate horror of having an embarrassing intimacy crudely exposed to someone else was suddenly more than he could bear. He wrenched himself up from the seat, misjudged his distance, slipped and fell off the end of it.
In a flash, before he had time to attempt to get up, her arms enveloped him. Again her lips took caressive possession of his and again she lifted one of his hands to her breast. How long this shattering experience might have gone on he never knew but a moment or so later a voice shattered him still further:
‘Well, there’s nothing like getting down to it. Don’t mind me.’
Half blindly he started to grope about on his hands and knees, trying to get up. The utter indignity of being discovered by Vanessa La Farge in that compromising attitude was so great that he might actually have been caught in an act of adultery.
‘So that’s what you two get up to when my back’s turned.’
Utterly cool and serene, Kitty O’Connor simply said: ‘Nonsense. We were just raising money for charity.’
‘I do beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I must apologize –’
‘Oh! for goodness’ sake don’t apologize. What on earth is there to apologize about? Some people have all the luck.’
‘I just wanted to say that it isn’t my usual habit to –’
‘Oh! by the way I had a great idea,’ she said, coolly too, exactly as if nothing had happened. ‘I thought we’d all have a candlelight supper, down here, by the bath-house –’
‘Mrs La Farge, I really don’t think I could. I really should be going –’
‘Oh! but I’ve already ordered it. Mary’s getting it ready. Smoked salmon, cold chicken pie, salad, fresh peaches – how’s that? And afterwards we could swim or something.’
‘Or something,’ Kitty O’Connor said and broke into peals of laughter. ‘I like that something.’
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘I really ought to tear myself away.’
Vanessa La Farge laughed too.
‘I didn’t notice any great effort to tear yourself away just now,’ she said, ‘if anything quite the contrary.’
‘Well, that really wasn’t quite what you thought it was.’
‘Oh! wasn’t it? Really?’
‘Inadvertently I –’
‘I think I’ll go and tidy myself up,’ Kitty O’Connor suddenly said, superbly cool too, and again as if nothing had happened. ‘What time’s supper?’
‘Now I really shouldn’t stay for supper –’
‘Of course you’ll stay. We’d love you to stay. We want you to stay. We won’t take no for an answer.’
‘Mind you behave yourselves while I’m gone,’ Kitty O’Connor said and with fresh flute-like scales of laughter went calmly away to the bath-house.
Alone with Vanessa La Farge, he felt himself to be a man sitting on the edge of a volcano.
‘I’m very jealous,’ she suddenly said.
‘Mrs La Farge, this is all very –’
‘I’m very jealous.’
Sitting on the stone seat, she seemed to adopt an attitude of extreme petulance, eyeing him covertly, slightly pouting.
‘You know, it really wasn’t like that –’
‘Don’t make it worse. You shower kisses on my best friend and then tell me it wasn’t like that. It looked pretty well like the real thing to me.’
‘It was quite unintentional.’
‘Unintentional! But still, as I say, some girls have all the luck. All right, I forgive you. You can make it up to me by going to get me another drink.’
Mute and miserable, he obeyed like a dog.
An hour or more later the flames of four tall green candles fluttered in the slightest evening breeze on the supper table. In between them a vase of sweet-peas, mauve and cream and carmine and maroon and purple, gave off a perfume at once elusive and exotic, causing Vanessa La Farge to say, more than once:
‘Ah! the smell of sweet-peas. It always does something to me.’
‘Makes you amorous, I expect,’ Kitty O’Connor said, ‘Like gin does to me.’
‘Oh! deeper than that,’ she said with mystery, ‘much deeper than that.’
The faces of the two women were of great and subtle beauty in the candlelight. To the perfume of sweet-peas and the transcending and mysterious effect they had on Vanessa La Farge was presently added the deeper aroma of peaches ripe from the hot house. And once Vanessa La Farge actually tortured Hartley Wilkinson Spencer still further by taking a peach of perfect substance and holding it against his cheek, delicately rubbing it up and down and then again up and down her own.
‘It’s one of the most exquisite things ever,’ she said, ‘the skin of a ripe peach. There’s no skin in the world like that.’
Though tortured, he remained impervious beyond the candlelight. As so often happens after sunset the air had grown a little warmer, with only the remotest breath to stir the candle flames. When the meal had reached the stage of dessert Vanessa La Farge again held up a peach to her face, rubbed it slowly against her cheek and then started to peel it, delicately.
‘You live alone, Mr Spencer?’
‘Well, I have a housekeeper.’
‘Ah! Lucky housekeeper.’
Her lips, moist with peach juice, shone as with fresh dew as she smiled slightly and eyed him across the candlelight. Still unmoved, he could only remark:
‘She cooks for me, after a fashion. Nothing like your supper tonight, of course.’
‘You must come more often.’
After the peaches there was coffee and as the three of them sat sipping it Vanessa La Farge suddenly reached out and took a sweet-pea from the vase. Its petals of deepest maroon seemed to have on them a sheen, delicately gold, borrowed from the candlelight.
‘It reminds me of our black magnolia,’ she said. ‘It has just that same midnight sort of velvet look.’
On the slightly painful subject of the black magnolia he decided to remain silent and she went on:
‘The magnolia was a bit of luck. If it hadn’t been for that we’d never have met you.’
The teasing in these two simple sentences passed over him like a scrap of summer thistledown floating over a rock.
‘Are you sure,’ she said, ‘you won’t change your mind about the fête?’
He couldn’t, he said. He simply couldn’t. There was a question of a very large contract. It had to be finished in Manchester that very day.
‘Oh! fiddlesticks to contracts,’ Kitty O’Connor said, ‘there’s more in life than contracts.’
He smiled at her in pitying silence.
‘And me waiting in the little tent,’ she said, ‘with kisses unlimited.’
The mention of kisses merely seemed to recall his painful behaviour on the seat, before supper, and he seized the moment as a chance to say, looking at his watch:
‘I
see it’s past ten. I ought to be going. My housekeeper will be wondering where I’ve got to.’
With low ripples of laughter the two women deliberately misinterpreted this remark as having in it something mildly sinister. In a voluptuous voice that was also mocking Kitty O’Connor said:
‘I told him he was a dark horse. It doesn’t take half an eye to see he’s the dark horse.’
Vanessa La Farge held the deep maroon sweet-pea to her face, breathing its perfume, looked across at him with liquid eyes and said:
‘Well, we’re going to miss you, aren’t we, Kitty?’
Holy Mary, they were too, Kitty said.
‘Of course I shall send you the cheque –’
‘Oh! cheques, cheques,’ Vanessa La Farge said, ‘anyway who’s for a swim?’
Kitty O’Connor accepted the suggestion with delight. Hartley Wilkinson Spencer merely sat silent, indicating refusal. Then Vanessa La Farge said:
‘Surely you’re not going to refuse us all the time, Mr Spencer? You do swim, don’t you?’
‘Oh! yes, yes. As a matter of fact I’m tremendously keen on it. I use the pool at the girls’ High School every morning. Winter and summer.’
‘You never do?’ Kitty O’Connor said. ‘How interesting.’
‘I asked Mary to bring down a pair of trunks when she brought the supper,’ Vanessa La Farge said, ‘so you can’t refuse on that score.’
‘Well, it’s very kind of you. Just a very quick dip.’
‘No hurry,’ she said and twirled the dark sweet-pea between her thumb and forefinger, so that it almost seemed to give off sparks in the candlelight, ‘the night’s still young. One night last week we were swimming until two in the morning.’
‘It’s so quiet tonight,’ Kitty O’Connor said. ‘Listen. You can hear the waterfall.’
At last, in this breathless atmosphere on which there seemed also to lie a dark bloom like that on the skin of the peaches and the wings of the sweet-pea flowers, the three of them went off to the bath-house to change. Meticulous, even fussy, with his clothes, he took more than ten minutes to do so and finally emerged in a pair of dark red trunks and a big white towel discreetly round his shoulders.
Five yards from the bath-house door he came to an abrupt halt, as if he had suddenly come up against a wall. The bright candle-flames in front of him had for a moment the effect of separating him from the pool beyond, like footlights in a theatre. His eyes were briefly unable to focus the scene and for a few moments he stood under the disconcerting impression that the nearer edge of the pool was graced with two white statues he had completely failed to notice before.