by Anne Weale
Cal lowered his newspaper, and gave her a long inscrutable look before he said, ‘You can’t have supposed that a man of my age would have had no relations with other women?’
‘No, but somehow it sounded as if you had loved her ... whoever you thought I was, I mean.’
‘No, I didn’t love her,’ he said slowly. ‘We enjoyed each other for a time, but you have no cause for jealousy. There’s been no one in my past who has meant more, or as much as you do, mi vida.’
After breakfast he told her that he had a number of telephone calls to make, and suggested that she should spend the morning looking round Harrods.
Antonia had thought that El Corte Ingles in Valencia was an impressive department store, but compared with Harrods it was small. Cal had given her forty five-pound notes, and told her that, before long, he would open accounts at all the major stores for her.
But she bought only a pair of tights. The idea of spending his money when she was not really his wife in any meaningful sense made her oddly uncomfortable.
‘I expected you to be tottering under a mountain of parcels,’ he said, when she returned to the suite.
There’s nothing I need.’
During lunch, in the restaurant, he said, ‘Look, I’m sorry to neglect you, but d’you think you can amuse yourself this afternoon? A minor crisis has arisen to which I should like to give my personal attention.’
‘Of course: I’ll go to Marks & Spencer. Everyone tells me it’s the place to shop in London.’
‘At a certain level, yes,’ he agreed.
They shared a taxi as far as the Marble Arch branch, and arranged to meet at half past five at a hotel not far from Bond Street.
‘On your own, at that time of day, you might find it difficult to get a taxi,’ said Cal.
‘Couldn’t I use the Underground?’
‘I would rather you didn’t. It’s none too clean, and it’s crowded, and sometimes there are objectionable people hanging about.’
‘I’m not a child, Cal, and I do speak the language,’ she said lightly.
‘Nevertheless I would rather you stayed above ground. Here we are.’ As the taxi pulled alongside the kerb, he sprang out to help her alight.
‘See you later. Don’t tire yourself.’ He kissed her hand, and climbed back into the cab which was soon lost to view in the melee of Oxford Street traffic.
Slowly, Antonia turned to enter the crowded ground floor of the famous English chain store. But at first her thoughts were with Cal on his way to the City rather than on the tee shirts and summer tops laid out on the counters nearest the doors.
Presently, among a babel of voices speaking languages from all parts of Europe and the Middle East, she overheard a snatch of conversation in Spanish. It made her feel homesick, not for the house ruled by her aunt, but for the places in Valencia where she and Paco had kept their uneasy trysts. Would her love for him fade, as Cal had forecast? Would there come a time when his memory brought her no pain?
Later that afternoon she explored another huge store, Selfridges, and then, on the opposite side of bustling Oxford Street, found a quieter street with no traffic which had the small, elegant shops she liked, and which led her to Bond Street and Fenwicks, a store recommended by Laura as being inexpensive but up-to-the-minute fashion-wise.
By this time she was beginning to feel tired. Her black patent shoes were not ideal for so much walking. She was glad to discover the store had a coffee bar, and to sit down for half an hour.
At first she passed the time by watching discreetly the other shoppers who were resting. But after a while her mind reverted to her marriage, and to the women who had preceded her in her husband’s life.
What was she like, the one to whom he, half-asleep, had murmured Come back to bed and be quiet, woman?
‘Don’t look so woebegone, dear. It’ll all come out in the wash, you know.’
Antonia became aware that this remark had been addressed to her by the person sharing her table, a plump little woman who seemed to have been on a shopping spree, judging by the number of carrier bags she had piled on the third chair.
She was eager to chat, and before long Antonia knew half her life’s history.
‘You have a sympathetic face,’ said Cal, when she told him about this encounter while they were having tea at their rendezvous.
‘Did you sort out the crisis?’ she asked, realising that she ought to have asked him this sooner.
‘The crisis?’ he repeated, with a raised eyebrow and a rather blank look. Then: ‘Oh, yes—yes, that’s been resolved. Will you have another sandwich?’
‘No, thank you.’
The thought had come into her mind that perhaps the crisis had never existed but had been an excuse to have a few hours to himself. Perhaps he had spent the afternoon with another woman—the one who, by his own admission, had once been his mistress.
It was an extraordinary thought for a bride to have about her husband on the third day of their marriage, but theirs was an extraordinary marriage. Also, Antonia had grown up in a society where chastity was still—although not, perhaps, for much longer—the norm among unmarried girls. But it was not a society in which men were equally chaste.
She had once heard her mother remark, in conversation with a friend, that if a wife was cold towards her husband, it was only to be expected that he would seek his pleasure elsewhere. Nevertheless, although she might have no right to be repelled by a carnality which she had excited but failed to gratify, the idea that while she was window-shopping Cal had been in bed with another woman was intensely repugnant to her.
‘Why are you looking like that?’ he asked her.
‘Like what?’
‘You had the expression of someone who’s caught a whiff of a particularly bad drain.’
‘Did I? How odd. I—I was thinking about a dress I saw in Fenwicks.’
‘If you liked it, why didn’t you buy it?’
‘It wouldn’t have suited me. It was Amparo’s kind of dress.’
That evening they went to another theatre, and this time it was Antonia who cast covert glances at the profile of the man beside her while he was intent on the action of the play.
Once he caught her watching him, and smiled and, reaching for one of her hands, held it in his. After a time he began to move his thumb back and forth over the knuckles of her first and second fingers. All his attention seemed to be on the actors and actresses on the stage, and she thought he was unaware of the gentle movement of his thumb. She knew it was silly of her to be distracted from the play by such an idle and trifling caress, and yet it did distract her. She was suddenly sharply aware of the shoulders which needed no skilful tailoring to make them look broad and powerful, of the muscular strength of the arm close beside her own, of the masculine shape of the knee which, if he moved it a little, would press against her own smaller, more rounded knee.
His thumb shifted from her knuckles and she felt the edge of his thumbnail tracing circles in her palm. To her surprise and confusion, she felt the fluttering in her stomach which he had induced the night before, only this time it was accompanied by a tingling sensation along the insides of her thighs. At the same time she knew that Cal knew precisely what he was doing, and what it would do to her.
She would have snatched her hand free except that, at that moment, the curtain came down at the end of the second act, and he took his hand away to join in the applause.
‘Shall we have a drink?’ he suggested, as the house lights went up.
‘I don’t really want one. You go,’ she answered.
‘I’m not bothered either.’ He paused. ‘Did you enjoy it?’
She knew what he meant. Not the play. In that case he would have said, ‘Are you enjoying it?’
Deliberately, she misunderstood him.
‘Yes, it’s very amusing, isn’t it?’ She pretended to be reading the programme notes, glad that the lights in the auditorium were not bright enough to reveal her heightened colour.
She recalled how, when they had been waiting to meet his father and sister at Valencia airport, he had asked her if there was fire under the snow and, at the time, she had thought he could never kindle the blaze which Paco had lit in her.
She remembered Cal saying there were few frigid women, only unskilful lovers, and she was beginning to suspect that her husband was as skilful as they came. But the thought didn’t please her. It repelled her. She didn’t want to find her heart and mind betrayed by her senses.
When, after they had dined, their taxi stopped outside the hotel, a couple were waiting to step into it. They were a middle-aged man and a glamorous girl, ash-blonde and flamboyantly dressed.
As Cal sprang out the man recognised him.
‘Cal Barnard! How are you, feller? I only flew in today. I was going to call you tomorrow.’
‘Hello, Irving. This is a pleasant surprise. I didn’t know you were coming over,’ said Cal, as the two men shook hands.
‘No, well, it was kind of impromptu. This is Liza.’
‘Hi, Cal.’ As the girl gave him her hand, her bracelet and rings sparkled in the light from the canopy which sheltered the entrance to the building.
‘Hello, Liza.’ He turned to Antonia who had stepped down from the cab and was standing at his elbow. ‘Darling, this is Irving Harper, an old friend of mine from the States. Antonia and I were married in Spain the day before yesterday, Irving.’
‘Married!’ the American exclaimed. ‘Gee, I never thought you would surrender your freedom, Cal. But when I look at you, Mrs. Barnard, I can see why he did.’ He used both hands to shake hers. ‘Congratulations to you both. I was going to suggest you should join us. We’re going to a nightspot. But if you people were only married the day before yesterday, in no way is Cal going to like that idea.’ His stout figure heaved with amusement, and the blonde girl giggled.
‘But what do you say we have a quick drink, and fix a date for when I come back from Paris and Milano?’ he went on.
Cal agreed and the four of them went inside to the hotel bar where Liza shed her fluffy white arctic fox jacket, revealing the top—what little there was of it—of her short evening dress of flame chiffon. Her legs were encased in high-heeled soft-ankled boots of silver kid, and her evening bag was a silver kid envelope on a silver shoulder chain. She had an opulent figure, and the fragile spaghetti straps of her dress looked as if they might snap under the strain at any moment.
‘What part of Spain are you from, Antonia?’ she asked, as the two men began to discuss events in the financial world.
‘From Valencia. Do you know Spain?’
‘Not Valencia. I’ve been to Marbella and Torremolinos. I thought they were fabulous places. I just adore the life down there—lazing around in the sun all day, and eating late, and the open-air nightclubs they have.’ Irving put a king-size cigarette in his mouth, recalled the presence of the two girls and offered the pack to Antonia.
She said, ‘No, thank you. I don’t smoke.’
Liza dipped into the pack with long plum-red nails. It was Cal who lighted her cigarette. He did not smoke and had no lighter, but he broke off a match from a book of them with the name of the hotel stamped on it which had been in the ashtray.
‘Thanks.’ As she exhaled a long plume of smoke, she gave him what, to Antonia, was an astonishingly bold appraisal. It was obvious what was in her mind, and Antonia thought it extraordinary of her to look at a man with that blatant message in her eyes in front of his wife.
Cal must have registered the look, but there was nothing but polite indifference in his expression as he looked back at her. Then he glanced at Antonia and smiled and, for a moment, it seemed to her that now there was a message in his eyes, and it was that he found her infinitely more attractive than this over-exposed blonde in whose bed, clearly, he would have been more than welcome had she seen him first.
Some time later Irving Harper turned to her and said, ‘I guess we should be on our way. I hope you haven’t minded me interrupting your honeymoon for half an hour, Antonia?’
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ she said smilingly. ‘I’m a stranger to London, and your daughter has been recommending various shops which I might not have found on my own.’
For a second or two there was a look on his face which puzzled her. Then he said, ‘Is that so? Well, I guess you girls always have shopping in common. Are you ready to go, honey? Goodbye for the present, Antonia. I’ll look forward to getting properly acquainted some time next month. Again my congratulations, Cal. You’re a lucky guy. Yessir—a very lucky guy.’
‘Why are you smiling?’ Antonia asked her husband when, a short time later, they were going up in the lift.
‘I was thinking of Irving’s expression when you referred to that blonde piece as his daughter.’
She said, ‘You mean she’s his wife? Oh, what a gaffe! I’m sorry, Cal.’
‘No, she’s not his wife either. I’m inclined to doubt that he ever saw her before this evening,’ Cal said dryly. ‘That wasn’t a genuine American accent. Probably some of her clients are Americans, and when she’s with them she uses their tricks of speech and a mid-Atlantic intonation, but I should say she’s a Londoner born and bred.’
‘You mean she was a call-girl?’
‘If she isn’t, she certainly dresses to give that impression.’
‘Is Mr. Harper a married man?’
‘He has been—twice. Both marriages ended in divorce.’
‘But he said he’d only just arrived. Where would he find a girl like that? In the bar here?’ she asked.
‘No, in England she and her colleagues are discouraged from haunting hotel bars, but even in the most respectable establishments the porter will usually organise some companionship for lonely travellers, if asked. I’m speaking from common knowledge, not experience,’ he added sardonically.
‘It wouldn’t have occurred to me to think otherwise.’
‘Wouldn’t it? Why not?’
‘Because your friend Mr. Harper isn’t attractive. You are. You wouldn’t need to engage a call-girl. Although, judging by the way she looked at you, you could have had Liza’s services for nothing.’
‘That I doubt very much. A more mercenary-looking girl I have yet to see. But thank you for your approbation. Forty-eight hours ago I had the impression that you found me anything but attractive. Things are looking up!’
By this time they had reached the door of their suite. Antonia would have gone straight through the sitting-room to the bedroom, but Cal called her back.
He took her coat from her shoulders and tossed it aside. ‘It’s usual for engaged couples to kiss each other goodnight,’ he reminded her.
Holding her by one hand, he moved to a sofa, and sat down and drew her down beside him. His arm slid behind her shoulders.
As they had always been, except for a little while on their wedding night, his lips were gentle. But the fear that any response on her part might make him become more ardent kept her still and stiff in his arms.
‘Can’t I make your heart beat even a little bit faster?’ he murmured, his mouth near her ear. And as he asked her the question, he slid his hand inside the front of her evening shirt to feel for himself if her heart was beating a normal rhythm.
He had never, be
fore their marriage, attempted even partially to undress her, or to touch her in any way other than the contacts considered permissible by someone as strait-laced as her aunt. The sudden warmth of his palm on the upper curve of her breast made her heart seem to lurch within her. Distracted by his soft kisses on her cheeks and eyelids, she had been unaware of his fingers undoing her buttons.
As she realised her shirt was now open to the waist, his mouth covered hers in a kiss of considerably greater warmth than those which had preceded it and, at the same time, his hand moved lower to cover the lacy cup of one of the pretty, flimsy bras she had bought for her trousseau while somehow managing to close her mind to the reason for their extra prettiness.
At the thought that his next move would be to deprive her of even the gossamer-thin barrier between his hand and her complete nakedness, she cringed back against the cushions, with a gasped, ‘Please, Cal!’
Immediately he released her.
‘Yes, perhaps I was going a little beyond our terms of reference,’ he said dryly, watching her pull her shirt together and fasten the buttons with fingers made clumsy by nervousness.
She could see by the smile in his eyes that he did not think it would be long before he would overcome her reluctance.
‘Off you go. Goodnight, querida.’ His eyes were both mocking and tender before he stood up and went to the well-stocked drinks cupboard to pour himself a nightcap while she retreated to the bedroom.
The incident made Antonia realise to the full how, up to the very day of her wedding, she had allowed her longing to be free from her aunt’s surveillance completely to cloud her mind to the other issues involved. Had they had a longer engagement, or had Cal been less circumspect, she might have come to her senses earlier. But by his self-control he had unwittingly conspired with the psychological block from which she had been suffering.
Now she was torn between the feeling that the wise course was to accept her marriage and make the best of it, and a contrary feeling that to give her body to a man—even her husband—when she didn’t love him, and indeed still loved someone else, would be scarcely less degrading than Liza’s cold-blooded relations with men.