“How very fetching you look, Ginevra,” said my mother in a studiedly neutral voice.
“I’ll have to keep you away from Oswald,” said my father lightly, “or he’ll be so overcome he’ll swallow his soup spoon!”
Oswald Stourham, a great crony of my father’s, lived in an ugly modern house at Llangennith with his wife, his unmarried sister and his daughter. The daughter was too young to attend the dinner party, but his wife and sister accompanied him to Oxmoon that evening and when they all arrived Stourham, who looked like a Punch cartoon of an English gentleman and talked like an old-fashioned masher, predictably dropped his monocle as soon as he saw Ginette. He was a good-natured, brainless fellow who had thoroughly deserved to inherit the fortune of his father, a Birmingham manufacturer who had patented an interesting form of hip bath.
His unmarried sister Angela, a woman of about thirty-five who had once shared a governess with Ginette, was just giving her old friend a warm welcome when Bayliss announced the arrival of the de Bracys with their daughter and two sons. The evening was gathering momentum. Taking care not to look in Ginette’s direction I did my best to resume my grand charade.
Sir Gervase de Bracy, a gouty old roué who had seen better days, was already heading purposefully in my direction, jowls quivering with excitement.
“Robert, my boy—delightful to see you—heartiest congratulations on all your recent successes—”
Little Mrs. Stourham swooped down on me. “Why, Robert, how well you look—isn’t Robert looking distinguished, Sir Gervase! I declare those photographs in the newspapers don’t do him justice! Have you see the photographs of Robert in the newspapers, Lady de Bracy?”
“I only read the Times, Mrs. Stourham.”
Meanwhile Oswald Stourham had cornered me. “I say, Robert, uncommon clever of you to win that latest acquittal, don’t you know—I didn’t like to think of a pretty little thing like that ending up on the gallows—”
“But what I want to know,” interrupted the de Bracys’ daughter Gwen, “is how she got hold of the arsenic! I never quite understood—”
“Gwen dear, murder’s so vulgar. Must you?”
Ginette and I were facing each other across the room. Hastily glancing in the opposite direction I found myself looking straight at my mother, and my mother, I was unnerved to discover, was looking straight at me.
“—yes, yes, I know she was acquitted but that was entirely owing to Robert’s brilliance—”
Meanwhile Oswald Stourham had turned aside to gossip with his crony. “… and how the deuce did poor Ginevra’s husband die, Bobby?”
“Oh,” I heard my father say easily, “it was just a little accident with a firearm.”
“Margaret”—Mrs. Stourham darted between me and my mother—“I hardly expected to see Ginevra looking so thriving!”
“Dearest Ginevra,” said my mother, “has great recuperative powers.”
At that moment Bayliss announced the arrival of Sir William and Lady Appleby, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Ginette steel herself for new horrors.
“Dear Ginevra, you must have been quite prostrated …”
The Applebys, who had long since decided to thank God that Kinsella had saved their son from a disastrous fate, were now more than willing to inundate Ginette with benign platitudes to conceal how much they disliked her.
“Dear Aunt Maud,” said Ginette, kissing Lady Appleby on both cheeks, “how kind you are! Yes, I’m sure it’ll take me simply years to recover—”
“Are you all right, Robert?” said John at my elbow.
“No. I think I’ve got a touch of sunstroke.”
“Lord, how awkward! Tell Mama.”
“No, I’ll struggle on.”
I struggled. Gallantly I took Lady Appleby in to dinner. Valiantly I labored through watercress soup, vanquished my lobster and feinted an attack on my roast duck. Doggedly I toiled in the coils of some formidably forgettable conversation. And all the while across the table Ginette glittered in her satin and diamonds and made a mockery of my charade of indifference.
“Robert, you’re shifting around on your chair as if it were a bed of nails!” protested Gwen de Bracy on my left.
“I’m so sorry, I thought I was showing matchless stoicism in the face of discomfort.”
I was indeed in discomfort but the discomfort was of a nature inconceivable to an unmarried woman.
“Do tell us more about London, Robert!” urged Mrs. Stourham across the table. “I suppose you go absolutely everywhere—what’s it like at Number Ten?”
I duly trotted out my Margot Asquith stories and before I could be asked how much her husband drank I deflected the conversation towards his eldest son Raymond whom I had known up at Oxford; like myself he was a Balliol man.
Somehow I survived the introduction of pudding, cheese and dessert and sustained the illusion that I was still eating. My glass of claret remained untouched, an impressive monument to my sobriety, but in contrast all the other guests had become very merry indeed and I had to spend a considerable amount of energy trying to pretend I was equally carefree.
Finally to my unutterable relief the ladies retired and the cloth was drawn. I hardly dared stand up as the ladies left the room, but managed to do so with a subtle flourish of my napkin. Sinking back into my chair as the door closed I then allowed myself to hope that my physical condition would be eased now that Ginette was no longer shimmering before my eyes, but I was to have no respite. Oswald Stourham embarked on some long story about a friend of his who knew someone who knew someone else who had slept with Lillie Langtry, and the very thought of a man fortunate enough to go to bed with any woman, even an aging Lillie Langtry, was enough to make me start shifting again in my chair.
My father had by this time noticed that something was amiss. “Robert, are you quite well?”
“I think if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll retire to the cloakroom for a moment.”
More sleight of hand with my napkin followed, but everyone was much too busy talking of Mrs. Langtry to pay any attention.
I was just washing my hands some minutes later when my father knocked at the cloakroom door and called my name.
I drew back the bolt to let him in. “I’m afraid I’ve just been sick,” I said, dredging up my remaining strength to lie convincingly. “I must have caught a touch of the sun this afternoon at the Worm. Would you and Mama think it very bad form if I excused myself and went upstairs?”
Five minutes later I was sitting on the edge of my bed and wondering, amidst the ruins of my well-ordered mind, what the devil. I was going to do.
VII
ALTHOUGH I WAS BY no means sexually inexperienced I had never before been rendered irrational by physical desire. Periodically I had felt the need to have sexual intercourse and periodically I had done so. I had always tried to behave well; I had not consorted with prostitutes; I had not made trouble with husbands; I had never had more than one mistress at a time; I had always terminated the affair as painlessly as possible when it bored me; I had done my best to be courteous, honest and kind. However it had never occurred to me before that this splendidly civilized behavior had only been possible because my deepest emotions had remained unengaged.
This uncomplicated private life had suited me well, perhaps better than I had realized at the time. I actually have very simple emotional tastes. (Someone else had commented on that recently but I could not quite remember who it was.) My prime concern when I embark on a liaison is that there should be no fuss and no mess. Naturally I expect to do what I want in bed but there again my tastes are straightforward and no woman has yet appeared to find them tiresome. Sexual athletics require skill, of course; I have no wish to imply that Burton’s translation of the Kama Sutra escaped me at Oxford, but in my opinion the skill is easily mastered and although I enjoy the game there are other sports I enjoy as much and more. I would put it below mountaineering, on a par with rugger and slightly above cricket in any list of sports in
which a gentleman should wish to excel.
Yet as I sat on the edge of the bed that evening I found that mountaineering was a distant memory, while rugger and cricket seemed as irrelevant as a couple of Stone Age tribal rites. I even felt that my entire previous life was not only remote but fantastic, a bloodless dance by a machine to a barrel organ that played only one tune. I supposed I was very much in love. This fact, I knew, was worthy of euphoria and I was indeed euphoric, but I was also alarmed. The unknown is often alarming and to be deeply in love was for me an unknown experience. Before that day my love for Ginette had been little more than a romantic myth but now it was a reality, and I felt confused, nervous, ecstatic, appalled, irrational and dangerous. I knew I should remain in my room but the next moment I was padding to the head of the stairs to see if the guests were on the brink of departure.
They were. In the hall all was noise and confusion, laced with fond farewells and fatuous remarks. I retreated to my room to think. It came as a relief to me to find I was still capable of thinking, but unfortunately I was thinking reckless thoughts of nocturnal expeditions; I was realizing the impossibility of running around Oxmoon in my nightclothes. I had to be able to say to anyone I met unexpectedly, “Oh, I’m feeling so much better that I thought I’d go out for a breath of air before I turn in.” I felt like a murderer plotting his crime. Stripping off my evening clothes I pulled on a pair of white flannels, thoughtfully packed by Bennett in anticipation of lawn tennis, and found the accompanying shirt. White socks and white canvas shoes completed the picture of a gentleman in quest of sport, and after a quick glance at my transformed reflection in the glass I opened the door again to gauge the advisability of a further reconnaissance.
The guests had gone. Everyone was drifting upstairs to bed. I decided to remain where I was.
A seemingly vast span of time elapsed which was probably no more than half an hour. At last, taking no candle, I risked another reconnaissance but all the lights were out in the hall and everyone seemed to be safely stowed out of sight. Returning to my room I waited for sleep to vanquish even the most active brains, and another eon passed. I finished the last cigarette in my case but fortunately perfect Bennett had included an additional packet in my bag. I mentally awarded him yet another increase in wages.
When the clock on my bedside table told me it was one o’clock I decided that to prolong the suspense would be more than my beleaguered flesh and blood could stand. I put out the candle. Darkness descended, rich and sensuous as the black satin of Ginette’s evening gown. I felt intense sexual excitement, and beyond it the old hypnotic vision of winning was beating its familiar drum to lure me on to the end of my dreams.
Leaving my room I moved swiftly and soundlessly down the corridor, tiptoed across the landing past the door of my parents’ room and glided down the passage into the other wing.
Time warped in the darkness around me and bent back in a great curve before running forward once more in a straight line. I was the child Robert again, tiptoeing through the night for a midnight feast with a bag of boiled sweets in his hand, and the child Ginette was waiting with licorice hidden beneath the eiderdown of her bed. Then I remembered that Ginette was no longer in her old room. My mother had put her in Foxglove, the best spare room, as if a line had to be drawn beneath the past.
When I reached the spare rooms I found the darkness unbroken. Foxglove, still named after its former wallpaper, was now only six feet away but there was no light visible beneath the door.
I knocked lightly on the panels and at once I heard a match flare in response. The bed creaked as she left it, and seconds later she was opening the door.
We looked at each other for one long exquisite moment in the candlelight, and after that there was no need for explanations. All I said in the end was, “I’ve changed my mind.”
VIII
AS I STEPPED PAST her she closed the door behind me and moved into my arms. We kissed. I drew her hard against me both to gratify myself and to prove to her how unmistakable my need was, and she laughed softly and yielded her pliant mouth to mine.
“Come to bed.”
I smiled, recognizing her desire, and withdrew my hands from hers to strip off my clothes.
My fingers grazed her rings.
My fingers grazed the rings that Kinsella had given her.
My fingers—her hand—Kinsella’s rings—and suddenly I was in a nightmare, the most horrific nightmare of my life, half-dressed, wholly paralyzed and absolutely and unquestionably impotent.
I was on the Shipway again and Ginette was saying, “It brought us together in the beginning and it kept us together at the end.” I was in the dining room at Brooks’s and Kinsella was saying, “The prize you’ve always wanted is the prize you can never win.” Having come second to an Irishman in the past I was now coming second to an Irishman again, and the prospect of defeat was dancing before my eyes like a demon. I was failing, I was losing, I was lost, unable to do anything but stare at the floor as the sweat trickled down my naked spine, unable to be rational by telling myself I was a better man than Kinsella, unable to summon the willpower which would convince me that I could outshine him in the most important contest of my life. Panic beat around my brain like a demented hammer. I had a hellish glimpse into an unutterably complex world that was far beyond either my comprehension or my control.
“Robert.” She slipped her arms around my neck and stroked my hair. “It’s all right, I understand—I understood this afternoon—oh, I shouldn’t have told you so much about my marriage, but I was so consumed with the desire to put Conor behind us forever—”
“Forever?” I said, hearing the one phrase I could understand and grabbing it.
“Oh darling, I long to set him aside—wasn’t that obvious when I invited you here?”
“But you implied that physically, despite all your troubles—”
“Yes, but the marriage was so ghastly, such a nightmare, and now I just want someone utterly different—I want you, Robert, you, you, you—”
“Yes, but—”
“There’s no competition. He’s dead and you’re different and you’re going to win, Robert. You’re going to win because there’s no one now, no one, who can possibly stand in your way.”
She took off her rings. She tugged them from her finger in a single impulsive gesture and the next moment she was flinging them into the farthest corner of the room. The past merged again with the present. In my memory I saw her throw away Timothy Appleby’s ring as she moved into Kinsella’s arms, and now as she threw aside Kinsella’s rings I saw her moving into mine.
I held her tightly. “I’ll always come first with you now, won’t I,” I said, “no matter what happens next.”
“Always!” Her eyes were brilliant with love.
“And you really love me?”
“Yes. Best of all. Always.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die!” she said laughing, echoing our old nursery oath. She lived. We went to bed.
IX
I HAD NOT BEEN in bed for more than a few seconds before I realized that the pleasure awaiting me there far exceeded even my most imaginative expectations, but I was in such a state by that time that the word pleasure seemed to bear little relation to what was going on. Despite all she had said I found myself consumed with worry. This was another new experience for me. In the past I had assumed that if one possessed physical fitness, the necessary desire and the required modicum of knowledge biology would do the rest, but now I found that although I was physically fit, beside myself with desire and well-nigh gasping to put my knowledge into practice, I was obsessed with the fear that biology would let me down. Fortunately impotence was now the least of my worries but other disastrous possibilities were jostling for pride of place in my fevered imagination. Caught between trying to remember the Kama Sutra on the one hand and my fear of an early ejaculation on the other, I was soon floundering around like a virgin schoolboy.
T
hen she put everything right. She whispered, “Darling, I’m sure you don’t want me to speak but I can’t help it, I’ve simply got to tell you what heaven this is,” and suddenly I forgot my fears and started thinking about heaven instead. This was a much more profitable exercise, and presently I found that no further ordeal divided me from the pleasure which exceeded all my dreams.
Afterwards for some time I was much too happy to speak but when she too remained silent I found I needed to hear her voice. Tightening my arms around her I asked if everything was well.
“Darling!” She gave me a radiant smile. “What a question!”
I felt compelled to say, “I’ll be better next time. The truth is I’m out of practice. I’ve been on my own too long.”
“Robert, I despair of you! No sooner have I convinced you that you’re not in competition with anyone than I find you’re still in competition with yourself!”
We laughed and kissed. I felt so much better that I even thought how pleasant it would be to smoke.
“I wish I’d brought my cigarettes with me.”
“Do you want one?” Opening the drawer of her bedside table she produced a packet. “So do I.”
“I shall never again disapprove of women smoking!”
We smoked pleasurably and intimately for a time. I was just about to tell her that I had never been so happy in my entire life when she asked idly, “Why has it been so long since the last occasion?”
“Oh …” I could hardly bore her with an explanation which involved disclosing the more convoluted aspects of my personality. “I’ve been working too hard. There’s been no time for pleasure.”
“What a mistake!”
I smiled. “But everything will be different now I have you,” I said, and it occurred to me that I would no longer even miss my mountaineering. We kissed. I extinguished our cigarettes and it was then, just as I was preparing to caress her again, that we both heard the soft footfall in the corridor.
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