Silver

by Graham Masterton

  Henry was silent, listening, feeling the endless circling movement of Baby Doe’s fingertip on the back of his hand. In spite of himself, he was beginning to feel aroused, and he kept thinking of kissing those angel’s-bow lips, and feeling those full breasts pressing against his chest. He hadn’t allowed himself to be tempted by a woman like this for as long as he could remember; but then he had tended to treat most pretty women stand-offishly, since he had accepted that he was always going to be loyal to Augusta, no matter how much he despised her, and that for some reason which he still failed to understand, God had ordained their marriage in heaven above.

  Baby Doe murmured, ‘I divorced Bill four years ago. He used to beat me, although I never found out why. He couldn’t love me, and so he beat me instead. I think in a funny sort of way he was trying to show me how much he cared; but if anybody cares for you so much that they want to kill you, then I think it’s time to leave, don’t you? And so that’s what I did; and came to Denver, looking for glamour.’

  She smiled, and said, ‘Sparkle, and money, and champagne; and now I’ve found them all. Well, the sparkle, anyway. I haven’t seen very much money yet, except for the thickness of Walter Cheesman’s bankroll, and as for champagne—well, they’re taking their own sweet time with that rum, aren’t they?’

  Her manners were suddenly far less formal; more country than city.

  ‘You didn’t order it yet.’

  She blinked at him. ‘I think you’d better light the gas. I don’t believe I can see very well. I’ve been drinking with Murray Holman all afternoon; and believe me, when Murray’s upset, he certainly drinks; and when I see him drinking, I have to join in, it has that effect on me; so you can bet that Murray’s feeling worse than terrible, and you can bet that I’m nearly feeling worse than terrible, too.’

  ‘Is that the real reason you don’t want to go to the Cheesmans’ dinner party?’ asked Henry, knowing very well that it wasn’t. ‘You drank too much with Murray this afternoon?’

  Baby Doe raised her hand, and touched the huge diamond mounted on her ring with the tip of her nose. ‘How much did this cost?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘But a lot?’

  ‘It wasn’t cheap, I’ll admit. But then neither are you. Not one thing about you; with the single and distinct exception of Murray Holman.’

  ‘Oh, Murray’s quite kind,’ she said. ‘He’s kinder than most men, anyway. It’s just that he’s duller than he looks, and I guess that’s an awful disadvantage, to be duller than you look.’

  Henry had now lit the gas-mantles beside the fireplace; and Baby Doe lifted her hand again, as Henry had done in the cab, and inspected her diamond ring more closely. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think to yourself, how can a stone be so beautiful?’

  Henry stood with his arms folded, watching her possessively. She looked up at him, and said, ‘You do understand that I can’t accept it, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ he told her. ‘It’s a gift. You’re going to be my leading lady, in my very first stage production.’

  ‘But it must have cost thousands and thousands,’ Baby Doe protested, ‘and what will people think?’

  ‘What people? Murray Holman? Walter Cheesman? The Sheedys? Why should you worry yourself about what they think?’

  ‘But they’re so respectable.’

  ‘They weren’t once. Just because they’ve taken to putting on airs; and sitting in their drawing-rooms on Brown’s Bluff playing whist, and cocking their noses up at anybody who isn’t a member of the Sacred 36, those self-adoring three-dozen who think they’re the cream of Denver society, that doesn’t mean they’re respectable. You ask Cheesman where that fat bankroll of his first came from; you ask Dennis Sheedy about his cattle deals. Listen to me, Mrs Doe—in Denver, you can be as spotless as your last dollar, but that doesn’t ever clean the dirt off your first.’ He put down the box of matches, and then he said, ‘Anyway, I didn’t think that actresses worried very much about respectability. Not respectability of that kind. The whist and Kensington kind.’

  Baby Doe stood up, and came across to the fireplace. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I’m not really an actress at all. I’m not like Louie Lord or Adah Isaacs Menken. I mean, I’m simply me, and that’s all. I’ve never acted in a play before, nor even recited.’

  ‘So why were you going to appear as Ophelia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Murray asked me. It just seemed like an exciting thing to do. And everybody at the theatre said I had natural charm. Especially Murray. He was always saying it.’

  Henry reached out and took her hand, the hand on which she was wearing the diamond ring, and smiled at her. ‘For once I agree with him. Now, shall we order some dinner? What will you have?’

  They ordered pepper-pot soup, with cheese and hot bread; and while they were waiting for the bellman to bring it up, Henry telephoned Murray Holman and said that he was Dr McKirdy, consulting physician to the Corona Hotel, and that Mrs Doe was running a fever. The telephone lines were very crackly and indistinct, but eventually Murray Holman seemed to understand, and said that he would come around to see her in the morning.

  ‘She’s running hot and cold!’ Henry assured Murray, in a fake Scottish accent.

  ‘You’re making me sound like a hotel room,’ Baby Doe laughed.

  It was a strange supper. As they sat at the table overlooking the traffic of Broadway, eating their soup, Henry found that Baby Doe was a complicated mixture of innocence and experience, vanity and uncertainty, self-assurance and complete artlessness. He began to see why a man as straightforward as her husband William might have beaten her: she could be frustratingly stubborn and obtuse, and when they started talking about Denver society, she said so much for the virtues of calling-cards, and the unsuitability of fish-knives, that he put down his soup-spoon and stared at her in friendly wonderment; unable to believe that a woman so alluring could be so determinedly petty about manners. The simple trouble was that for all of her looks, for all that she had learned, she was afraid. She knew that she was admired, and she delighted in it; but she was still unsure of her place in society, and whether it was better to be risqué and adored, or cool and acceptable. This was a world in which there were scores of whorehouses and illicit gaming dens, and yet a world in which a woman could be ‘cut’ for picking up too large a piece of pigeon-wing at table. ‘If the woman to whom you are talking should lift too large a piece of food from her plate, you should immediately cease all intercourse and stare steadfastly into an opposite corner of the room.’

  But Henry adored her. Adored her looks, and relished her company; because in spite of her anxiety about social niceties, she was funny and provocative and endlessly flattering.

  ‘You shouldn’t have bought me this ring. You shouldn’t,’ she said.

  ‘Give me one good reason why,’ he challenged her.

  ‘Because it will make me suspect your motives,’ she smiled. ‘It will make me think, when I look at it, that your thoughts are not entirely honourable.’

  Henry sat back, and wiped his mouth. ‘Perhaps they’re not. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t accept it.’

  She said, ‘I don’t know how to. And quite apart from that, I don’t know whether I ought to.’

  ‘You think that I’m seducing you, is that it? And that by giving you this ring, I’m trying to make it impossible for you to say no?’

  She didn’t answer. But Henry stood up, and came across to her, and took hold of her wrist, feeling silk over skin over narrow delicate bones, and said, ‘I’m going to go now. I’m going to leave. Not because I’m angry with you, or upset with you; but simply because I don’t want you to feel that you’re compromised. I want you to keep the ring, but I don’t want you to feel that you have to give me anything in return. Nothing at all: not friendship, not affection, not money, not love. I’ve given it to you because I like the look of you, because it looks
well on you; and because the very first moment I saw you at the restaurant today with Murray Holman, I thought to myself, God, there’s a dazzling star, if ever there was one; and a dazzling star deserves a dazzling star.’

  He paused, and then he smiled; quite aware what a calculated speech he was making. More gently, he said, ‘If you never want to see me again, that’s your choice. How can I force you? But you and this diamond have always been destined to meet each other; it’s part of the life-force that every diamond possesses, and which every human possesses. Before you were even thought of, this diamond was already waiting in the ground; but when you were born, it stirred, and now it’s sitting on your finger. It’s magical, don’t you see, just like you are.’

  Baby Doe reached out and tugged at his sleeve, and said, ‘It’s just so much; and you don’t even know me. It’s just so much. You’ve made me frightened. I keep thinking to myself, what does he want from me, to pay him back for a present like this? Because, Henry, please, if we’re going to be realistic, who gives away a diamond ring to girls they’ve never met before? And not just an ordinary diamond ring. This: it’s enormous! If I hadn’t seen it flash for myself, I would have thought it was glass.’

  ‘Don’t think anything of it,’ he told her. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night, for dinner.’ He went to the door, and picked up his hat.

  His hand was already on the doorknob when she said, ‘Don’t go.

  ‘I must. It wouldn’t be right.’

  ‘I said, don’t go,’ she repeated; and stood up, and came towards him with her skirts whispering on the carpet like cautioning friends.

  At that moment, there was a polite knock at the door. It was the bellman inquiring if they had finished their dinner, and would it be possible for him to remove their dishes. This was Henry’s chance to go; to play the game the way he wanted to. But when he looked again at Baby Doe, and the gas-light in her eyes, he went against his poker-playing instincts and put down his hat, and stood and waited in silence while the bellman collected the plates and the cutlery, watching Baby Doe while she, in return, watched him.

  When the bellman had gone, and closed the door behind him, Baby Doe said, ‘You couldn’t have gone. You haven’t told me anything about yourself at all. If I’m going to accept your ring, at least I have to know who you are.’

  He said, ‘I don’t think I’m anybody.’

  ‘You must be.’

  He came forward and he put his arms around her waist and he held her close. She didn’t resist at all: in fact she laid her head against his starched shirtfront as if she had known him for ever, instead of less than a day.

  ‘My name is Henry Roberts,’ he said, quietly. Beside him, the gas-mantle hissed and flared. ‘I come from Bennington, south Vermont, where I used to carve gravestones. I fell in love, lost my love, fell in love again and lost her too. I married eighteen years ago out of practicality and pity; yes, and defeat, too. A lack of fire. Today I’m very rich, and growing richer by the minute. That gentleman I was talking to today, David Moffat, he’s my banker and he was telling me the news that I’m a millionaire, or almost. But I discovered something else today, too: that it’s even better being a millionaire if you have someone who enchants you to spend your money on.’

  ‘Murray told me you were married,’ whispered Baby Doe, against his shirtfront.

  ‘Well, yes, I am. But I don’t think we care for each other very much. It’s just what I said it was. A marriage of practicality. A business arrangement, more than anything else. Augusta manages the store and I manage the silver-mine and at least in the evenings we have somebody to talk to.’

  ‘Augusta? That’s her name?’

  Henry nodded.

  ‘What does she look like?’ asked Baby Doe.

  ‘Not like you,’ he told her. ‘Nothing at all like you.’

  She raised her head to him, and he held her face in his hands as if he were holding the Grail; the one true light, discovered at last. The irises of her eyes were the pale blue of fragile china; a touch of rouge highlighted her cheekbones. He bent forward and he kissed her, without invitation and without hesitation, and that kiss seemed to last for no longer than a single beat of his heart, or a single tick of the domed brass clock, which was six hours wrong; and yet it was the most disturbing kiss of his life; a kiss of eroticism and treachery, a taste of what might have been and hadn’t; a taste like red wine and black sins.

  A breath, and she gently pulled away from him; her skirts still whispering. He said nothing, stood where he was. The tiny curls on the back of her neck; her profile lost in the shadow from the gas-mantles. She said, ‘You shouldn’t have put a name to her. Now I know who it is that I’m going to betray.’

  He came forward and held her shoulders, warm hands on bare white skin. ‘You would have known sooner or later.’

  ‘I shouldn’t trust you. How could you possibly buy me a theatre? What kind of man buys a woman a theatre?’

  ‘What kind of woman deserves one?’

  She leaned her head back so that it rested against his shoulder. He ran his fingertips down the long arch of her neck, and touched her, so softly that she scarcely felt it, in the deep cleavage between her breasts.

  ‘You’re playing a game with me,’ she said.

  He smiled, kissed her hair. ‘If I am, you’re winning.’

  Hand in hand, almost formally, they walked through to the bedroom. The affair was going to commence by mutual understanding; no words were necessary. Perhaps it had been inevitable from the moment Henry had walked up to Murray Holman’s table and introduced himself. Perhaps they had both been conniving at it all evening long; testing each other, teasing. But he took off his grey coat, and hung it on the hook on the back of the door; and then in his silk-backed waistcoat came over to her and unfastened the hooks and eyes at the back of her gown, revealing inch by inch the pink and white embroidery of her corset-cover, kissing as he did so her neck and her ears.

  She sat on the edge of the high brass bed, her back straight, to slip off her corset-cover and to unlace her tight silk and whalebone basque; and he watched her, unbuttoning his cuffs and his shirtfront, prising off his boots, and loosening his embroidered satin suspenders. At last she stood in front of him, naked except for her grey silk stockings and white ruffled garters; her head raised provocatively and unashamedly, her full breasts cupped in her hands, the dark raspberry nipples tightened. On her softly rounded stomach there were the marks of her whalebone stiffeners, but her waist was slim, and her hips were narrow, and her thighs were so slim that even although she was keeping her legs tight together, there was a perfect inverted triangle between them. Her pubic hair curled up from between her thighs like a dark wisp of smoke, through which the crimson flame could just be glimpsed.

  Henry stepped out of his silk long johns, the new ones he had bought today on 16th Street. His body was as white as hers, but in twenty years of storekeeping he still hadn’t lost his muscularity, the heavy framework of a man trained in cutting stone. Between his thighs he was rearing up, and with each beat of his heart he reared a little more; and the skin was already peeled back to reveal a proud and glistening head.

  Baby Doe approached him without a word, and laid both of her hands flat against his chest. He kissed the curls around her forehead, and then her eyelids, and then smoothed the palm of his hand all the way down the warm curve of her back, running just the tips of his fingers in the cleft of her bottom. Her heavy breasts swayed against him, and he felt the touch of her nipples, and he closed his eyes to control the breathlessness that was tightening his lungs. He hadn’t felt such an upheaval of emotions for years and years; he hadn’t felt such urges ever. Her stomach pressed against his jutting penis, and the sensation was electric; so that he felt his hair prickle up on the back of his neck; and his fingernails itch as if they were going to crawl off the ends of his fingers; and such an explosive tightness between his legs that he couldn’t have spoken, even if he had wanted to.

  He stooped a
little, and picked her up in his arms. She was so small and warm and light compared to Augusta; her skin was so soft. He kissed her and laid her on the satin comforter, and as he climbed on to the bed beside her she clung to him, and began to kiss him back, murmuring now in words that he was unable to understand.

  ‘You’re so tight,’ she whispered at last; her hot breath crowding his ear. ‘You’re so tense! Feel your arms. Your shoulders. All your muscles are tight as springs.’

  He kissed her again and again, and caressed and squeezed her breasts, stimulating her nipples with his tongue and his teeth. She ran her hands into his hair, and hummed with pleasure; but when at last he started to slide his hands down her stomach, and kiss her between her breasts, she firmly but gently raised his head up, and said, ‘Too tense, my sweetheart! Too tight! Too anxious!’

  ‘What—?’ he began, but she shushed him, and reached down to grasp his penis in her fist.

  ‘This first,’ she said, and although she said it gently it was an unmistakable order. She began to rub him, up and down, clutching him tightly and without fear; while her other hand, the hand on which she still wore the diamond ring, cupped and played with his scrotum. He felt the cold diamond scratch against his skin.

  She lay back on the slippery comforter and he raised himself over her, every muscle in his body so taut that he looked like a Greek sculpture of a fallen warrior; deltoids and dorsals and quadriceps quaking with frustration and outlined in the lamp-light as if they had been carved and polished from the whitest hardest marble. She rubbed him more quickly, and his head dropped down between his shoulders with a jerk, and he gasped for breath.

  ‘My sweetheart,’ she breathed, and from then on she would always call him that. He heard her but he couldn’t see her; the bedroom seemed to have contracted smaller and smaller until it was a shrunken spot of infinite tension and infinite weight. He forgot time, and space, and where he was, and who he was; and then abruptly the tension broke and the bedroom rushed back to its normal size, and light and images came sparkling back, and there was Baby Doe lying beneath him, her face flushed with affection and amusement and actual joy, her neck and her breasts necklaced with shining pearls of white.