White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  When the announcement came over the loudspeakers that the Rolling Stones had arrived and would be appearing in approximately twenty minutes, a roar went up and the chant ‘We want Mick’ began to surge through the vast crowd.

  Serena extricated herself from the sweaty hold of the Australian. She needed the bathroom and she had no intention of forcing her way to one of the many portable facilities that had been parked on the grounds. As the female group onstage pounded into a blistering rendition of Then He Kissed Me, she pushed and shoved her way out of the throng, running towards the house. She ducked beneath the barriers that had been erected, saying breathlessly to the policeman who ran towards her, ‘I’m Serena Blyth-Templeton! I live here.’

  The policeman recognized her and lifted the last barrier to allow her through. She ran up the south entrance steps and hammered on the enormous double doors there. The butler ascertained it was a member of the family and not a member of the mob and opened the door. Serena ran past him, saying between gasps for air, ‘Thanks, Herricot. Super fun, isn’t it?’

  The butler didn’t demean himself by agreeing with her. Instead, he speedily relocked and bolted the doors and retreated to an inner sanctum where he could lengthen his odds of survival by placing cushions against his ears.

  Serena took the steps of the great staircase two at a time. She was dripping with perspiration and she wanted to have a quick, cold shower before she returned to the fray. Even in the house the music was deafening. From her bedroom window she had a spectacular view of the sloping hillside and the avenue of elms, every inch of space packed with dancing, clapping, cheering, applauding fans. Banners were being waved, some emblazoned with ‘We love Mick’, others with ‘Peace not war’, and ‘Americans out’.

  She giggled as she stepped out of her dress and danced, hips swinging, into her bathroom, hoping that the visiting Andersons wouldn’t imagine the banners were personally for them. American involvement in Vietnam had been escalating all summer, and so had the protests against it. Today, at least, Lance was surrounded by thousands of political sympathizers.

  She stood, face upturned beneath the shower, the water turned on full blast. For once life wasn’t boring. She was blissfully high on a combination of alcohol and generously shared joints. In another few minutes Mick Jagger would be onstage. Later, there would be the ball, and Jagger would be there. She would meet him, and who knew what would happen after she did?

  She stepped out of the shower, treading dismissively over the discarded white mini, yanking another dress from her armoire, this time a lemon-coloured one, equally short. To the best of her knowledge, the idea of a Bedingham pop festival was the first and only idea that her forty-six-year-old father had ever had. It had been stunningly well worth the wait. There were television cameras recording the event, BBC interviewers roaming through the crowd, and the festival was already being spoken of as if it were an established annual event. As it would be.

  ‘This year the Stones, next year the Beatles!’ she said zestfully to the house in general, striding out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  As she hurried down the main staircase, a door in the inner hall below her opened and a tall, dark stranger walked nonchalantly out of the salon and towards the door leading to the drawing room.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted indignantly, beginning to run down the remaining stairs towards him. ‘The house is closed to visitors! Didn’t you see the signs? The barriers?’

  He turned unhurriedly, one hand on the knob of the living room door. ‘I would have had to be blind not to have seen them,’ he said dryly.

  She stopped suddenly on the bottom step, her heart beginning to slam. She knew she had been right about his overpowering masculinity when she had seen him from a distance. Now, close up, his sexuality rushed over her in waves. ‘The house is closed to visitors,’ she repeated, walking towards him.

  His eyes weren’t dark like his hair; they were a hot electric blue, and there was charm as well as insolence in the lines of his long, mobile mouth.

  ‘I’m not a visitor,’ he said, his eyes moving from her hair to her face, to her breasts, to her legs and back again with brazen appreciation.

  The minute he spoke she knew that he was American, but an American with a very generous dash of the Celt. His tall, lean build, and his colouring, were those of a certain; type of Irishman and, like them, he had a whippy look to him that said he would be an ugly customer in a fight – and something else about him made Serena believe he wouldn’t need much of an excuse to join any fight.

  ‘I know damn well you’re not a visitor!’ She wanted to sink her teeth into his neck, to lick the perspiration from his skin, to see if he looked as magnificent naked as he did in his open-necked white shirt and his tight-fitting blue jeans. ‘You’re a musician. I saw you earlier, on the rear of the stage. Now, will you please leave the house? As I have already said, it is not open today to visitors.’

  She had walked right up to him, with every intention of physically knocking his hand away from the drawing room doorknob. When he left, she would go with him. She wasn’t about to lose him again. But she would be damned to hell before she allowed anyone, even this excessively handsome man, to have the run of Bedingham.

  ‘I am not a visitor,’ he said again, leaning back against the door and folding his arms negligently across his chest. ‘And I’m certainly not a musician.’

  ‘Then who the devil are you?’ she demanded. Suddenly her eyes widened and her voice choked with laughter, she said, ‘Oh, hell! Don’t tell me! I know! You’re an Anderson!’

  ‘And you’re a Templeton,’ he said, eyes gleaming with answering laughter and with something else, something she knew was naked in her own eyes: unconcealed, instant sexual desire.

  ‘A Blyth-Templeton,’ she corrected him, her eyes moving over him with the same blatant appreciation he was showing. At five feet ten, she was nearly as tall as he. Slowly her eyes roved back towards his face, over the bulge in his crotch, the olive flesh tones of his neck and throat, the attractively self-deprecating quirk at the corners of his mouth. Their eyes met and held, and excitement raged through her. This wasn’t going to be just good! This was going to be sensational!

  ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Sabrina? Sophie? Selina? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Serena. And you?’

  ‘Kyle.’

  She nodded. She had been right about the Celtic blood. ‘I thought you were supposed to be old Boston, not Boston Irish,’ she said, so close to him that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek.

  ‘Our family is like yours,’ he answered her, white teeth flashing in a dazzling, down-slanting smile. ‘We turn a blind eye – when it suits us.’

  She laughed throatily. ‘And would it suit you now?’ she asked, one hand on her hip, the line of her thigh knowingly provocative.

  He grinned. It was very rare for him to meet a girl tall enough to face him eye to eye, and rarer still to be so flagrantly propositioned by one as beautiful. She had come down the broad, sweeping staircase towards him with all the speed and grace of a panther. His grin deepened. With her long mane of gold hair, and her honey-gold skin, she wasn’t a panther, she was a puma. Sleek and supple, and wonderfully predatory.

  ‘Why not?’ he said, easing himself casually away from the door. ‘How about a guided tour?’

  Outside, the screams and shouts had reached cataclysmic proportions as the Stones belted out the opening bars of It’s All Over Now and Mick Jagger leapt onstage.

  Serena’s smile widened. Incredibly she no longer gave a damn about Jagger. ‘Come this way,’ she said, opening the drawing room door with a flourish. ‘It will be my pleasure.’

  This room was Bedingham’s formal drawing room, used only for receptions and soirées. An eighteenth-century Blyth-Templeton, eager for a room that would serve as a grand reception room for county balls, theatricals, concerts, and other entertainments, had commissioned the leading
architect of the day and asked him to create one. He had done so by removing several internal walls and ceilings and the rooms above them, creating a grandiose room that rose the whole height of the house, culminating in a wide skylight dome, ecclesiastical in splendour.

  Kyle whistled through his teeth. ‘Is the whole house as old as this?’

  ‘This isn’t old,’ Serena said in amusement, walking across to the white marble and ormolu chimney breast and standing with her back to the sheet of mirror that rose above it, one foot on the fender as Kyle looked around him. ‘This room was added in the 1770s, which is late in Bedingham’s lifetime. The house was originally built around the remains of a dissolved abbey in 1532.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kyle said as she led the way out of the room and through a door in the far corner to an adjoining room. ‘I’m impressed. What room is this?’

  ‘It’s known as the Red Room because of the colour of the walls. We use it as the family dining room.’

  Unlike the drawing room, which had been light and airy, the walls covered in panels of yellow silk, the carpet a dove grey bordered in blue and gold, the Red Room’s walls and ceilings were painted a deep Pompeian red. The room was dark and oppressive.

  ‘It isn’t a colour I’d like to live with myself,’ he said with blunt frankness.

  Serena laughed. ‘It wasn’t our choice either. It was painted like this in Queen Victoria’s reign and hasn’t been altered since.’

  Kyle shook his head in disbelief, ‘My mother has the house painted every year. She’d have a stroke at the thought of eating in a room that hadn’t been changed in over a hundred!’

  ‘Oh, we refurbish it a little every now and then,’ Serena said, laughing and watching him, wondering where she would take him for the culmination of their tour. Her bedroom or a guest bedroom? She walked across to one of the windows looking out over the north lawns. ‘Do you see that yew tree? The one nearest the house? It was already fully grown when Henry VIII gave Matthew Blyth permission to domesticate the abbey. Wood from that tree provided bows for the weapons of the yeomen of England. That is how old Bedingham is.’

  He looked across at her curiously. ‘You really love this place, don’t you?’

  She turned away from him, the deafening sound of the concert a little more muted now that they were on the north side of the house. ‘Of course,’ she said simply. ‘It’s magnificent. Let me show you upstairs.’

  They left the room by an opposite door, climbing the back stairs and coming out in a long gallery, the walls ornately decorated with plaster garlands of fruit and flowers and laurel wreaths.

  ‘I know where we are again,’ Kyle said as from outside the thunderous beat of Little Red Rooster was replaced by Not Fade Away. ‘My room is the little yellow room, just off the first landing.’

  Serena ignored the guest rooms. They weren’t splendid enough as a setting for what was about to take place. Only one room was splendid enough.

  ‘This is the Queen’s Room,’ she said, throwing open a door and entering a large sun-filled room with a four-poster state bed standing in the centre on a small dais. ‘So called because Queen Elizabeth I is reputed to have slept here, and Queen Anne in 1712 most certainly slept here.’

  There was a central canopy, the corona carved with Prince of Wales feathers. The bedposts were painted white and gold and the netted hangings were backed by crimson brocade edged with thick braid and a deep knotted fringe, and held at the corners by elaborate tassels.

  ‘It’s impressive, but a little small,’ Kyle said, standing at the side of the bed, one hand resting on a white and gold post.

  ‘When Queen Anne slept here, she slept alone,’ Serena said, her tongue moistening her lips as she stood at the opposite side of the bed, barely four feet away from him, wanting him so much that she could barely stand.

  ‘Poor Anne.’ His glossy blue-black hair was low over his brows, his Celtic blue eyes holding hers. ‘Has anyone slept in it since?’

  The dark, rich throb of his voice sent shivers down her spine.

  ‘Queen Victoria,’ she said, her vulva engorged and aching. ‘And one or two lesser notables.’

  ‘But no one recently?’

  Her voice was hoarse, her eyes burning. ‘No one in living memory,’ she said, wondering how long it would take them to scramble out of their clothes, wondering if the state bed was strong enough for the punishment it was about to receive. To a roar of applause that could be heard a county away, Not Fade Away merged into I Wanna Be Your Man.

  The light in his eyes was devilish. ‘Then let’s rectify the situation,’ he said, his hands on his belt, his buckle already half undone.

  Without a further word of encouragement, without his even laying a finger on her, she pulled off her boots and unzipped her dress, sliding it off her shoulders in feverish haste, kicking it away from her, wrenching her panties down with trembling fingers.

  He threw his jeans and shirt away from him, whistling low. ‘I knew you’d look fantastic naked,’ he said thickly, ‘but you look even better than I’d imagined!’ Without wasting any more time on words, he reached across the bed for her, pulling her down on it, rolling her beneath him.

  Her nails clawed his back, her legs opening wide. She needed no preliminaries, no soft words or caresses. She had been ready for him ever since she had faced him at the foot of staircase. ‘Now!’ she demanded fiercely, twining her legs around him, her body straining toward his in primeval need. ‘Now, you bastard! Now!’

  His mouth came down hard on hers, and the moment that he mounted her, he entered her, plunging deeply and unhesitatingly into her hot, sweet centre. Outside, Mick Jagger blasted into Come On, fifty thousand fans screamed and shouted, the ancient bed shook and shuddered, and as Kyle’s sperm shot into her like hot gold, Serena reached a climax that left her almost senseless.

  For long minutes neither of them even attempted to move or speak. His heart slammed thuddingly against hers, beads of perspiration running down his neck and shoulders.

  ‘That …’ he said at last, easing himself away from her and rolling over on to his back, ‘… was quite … remarkable.’

  Serena let out a long, deep, satisfied sigh, and opened her eyes. ‘I knew it would be,’ she said composedly. ‘I knew the minute I saw you, on the rear of the stage.’

  He turned over on his side, resting his weight on his elbow. ‘That’s quite an ability,’ he said, grinning down at her. ‘If you could put it in a bottle and market it, you’d make a fortune!’

  She giggled and then stretched languorously. ‘Before we make love again, I need a drink and a smoke. Stay here and conserve your energy and I’ll go on a foraging expedition.’

  ‘If you’re intent on making love again in anything like the same fashion as last time, make sure whatever you bring back is strong,’ he said teasingly.

  She sat up and leaned over him, kissing him full on the mouth, her sheet of pale gold hair swinging down like a curtain around them. ‘I will,’ she said, her eyes dancing as she drew her mouth away from his. ‘Because I am. Again and again and again and again.’

  He groaned in mock defeat, and she laughed springing from the bed and stepping back into her lemon mini-dress, saying, ‘I’ll be back in five minutes. Don’t move.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Kyle said, the hot afternoon sun spilling through the leaded windows on to his hard, lean body. ‘I doubt I’ll ever move again!’

  ‘You will,’ she promised, swinging from the room as Jagger launched into The Last Time.

  Kyle grinned. He knew he would. His zest and vigour were more than equal to hers. He just didn’t see why she should take anything for granted.

  By the time she returned, he was already hardening again at the mere thought of her. She was like some magnificent amazon. Beautifully proportioned, totally uninhibited.

  ‘Where did you learn to make love in such a hurry?’ he asked as she moved a couple of Staffordshire figurines from a rosewood side table to make room for two bottles o
f Margaux and two glasses.

  ‘I wasn’t in a hurry,’ she said impishly, taking off her dress and tossing a joint across to him. ‘If I’d been in a hurry, I would have made love to you on the steps of the great staircase!’

  He laughed, watching her as she poured out the wine, the tousle of her pubic hair a rich wheat-gold. ‘Hurry or not, it was still pretty experienced.’ He lit the joint, inhaling deeply. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ she said, walking across to the bed, a full glass of wine in either hand. ‘And you?’

  ‘Nineteen.’ He didn’t want to talk about himself; he wanted to talk about her. ‘Where did the expertise come from? Rollicking with the yokels in local haystacks?’

  ‘Certainly not. The expertise is from an extremely exclusive Swiss finishing school.’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘I thought they were for perfecting French and learning how to play hostess to ambassadors.’

  ‘They are also for learning how to ski,’ she said as if explaining everything.

  White teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Okay. I give up. What has learning to ski to do with sex?’

  She laughed huskily at his innocence. ‘Skiing itself has nothing to do with it, but oh, those Swiss skiing instructors! Those wonderful, handsome, athletic, adventurous, sex-mad, virile Swiss skiing instructors!’

  ‘If Swiss skiing instructors are responsible for the mind-bending experience of a few minutes ago, then I raise my glass to them,’ Kyle said, lifting his glass of Margaux high. When he put it down again he said, the mere tone of his voice making her damp with longing, ‘Finish your wine. It’s my turn to surprise you.’

  She did. And he did. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, her eyes widening, the sensation in her solar plexus like a bomb that had been detonated. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

  They didn’t talk again for a long time. Outside, Mick Jagger was succeeded by Peter and Gordon, and after them Gerry and the Pacemakers.

  In the Queen’s Bedroom, all through the long afternoon, Serena and Kyle made love with the zestful, undiminished appetite of two healthy young animals. He made love to her slowly, withdrawing whenever she neared satisfaction, teasing and arousing her until she screamed at him to come to a conclusion. He made love to her with his tongue alone, not allowing her to reach out and touch him, forcing her to remain completely and excruciatingly passive. By the time they lay exhausted, sheened with sweat, the ornate brocade covers of the bed half falling on the floor, the sun was sinking in the sky and both bottles of Margaux were empty.