They kissed and a breeze filtered through the open casement pushing the lace curtain against her hair. He moved a little way. ‘You look like a bride,’ he grinned.
‘Not me,’ she said. ‘And not in a veil. A nun, maybe.’
They fell onto the bending bed and lay there against each other. She wriggled her shoes off and said: ‘Where are we going to have dinner?’
‘Do I have to feed you first?’
‘You certainly do. I want this to be romantic.’
She eased herself from him and padded into the bathroom. He watched her thinking how it was that a woman became a girl when she walked without shoes. The bathwater began to run. He stretched back on the coverlet and listened to her sounds. She began to sing in a small voice. A finger of steam beckoned from the door.
‘Would you like another glass?’ he called.
‘When I’m in the bath,’ she answered.
He lay back again, a tranquil smile moving across his face. Someone began to play a piano in a room quite near.
He poured the champagne and asked her if she were ready.
‘Ready, when you are,’ she called.
Holding the two glasses he went in. She was in the bath sitting up, froth piled around her. Her nipples were covered but the tops of her wet breasts glistened. He kissed her on her damp lips and handed her the glass. His hand touched the slope at the side of her bosom.
Barbara quietly took his hand away but kissed his fingers. ‘This is going to be very good isn’t it,’ she said. ‘I know it is. I want it to last.’
He stood away from the edge of the bath. ‘I’ll find out from the concierge where we should eat,’ he said.
He went into the bedroom and she started to sing again, a trite, incorrect song. While he was speaking on the phone, she appeared at the bathroom door wearing a cotton Victorian robe that went to her feet. He said ‘Merci’ to the concierge and, taking her in, put down the telephone.
Bramwell regarded her gravely and she walked, like someone who had made up her mind, towards him. He had remained sitting on the side of the bed and she pushed him firmly backwards onto the quilt, and climbed on top of him. ‘I’m too young,’ he whispered.
‘Stop it,’ she smirked. ‘I’ve come for you.’
His hands went around her buttocks, warm from the bath, sliding over the cotton robe. Then he brought them to her waist and to her breasts. They kissed each other’s faces. ‘Show me how,’ he mumbled.
‘Stop fooling, Bram,’ she warned. ‘This is lovely.’
‘I have to take my clothes off.’
‘I’m not shifting.’
‘I’ll have to manage.’
‘I’ll help,’ she promised.
While she still lay lightly above him they manoeuvred his shirt off. She assisted with his trousers, tugging at one side while he levered the other. ‘I must escape,’ he moaned.
‘You sound like Bulldog Drummond.’
‘Bulldog Drummond?’
‘My father liked him. You must meet my father.’
‘Some other time.’
When he was naked, she remained prone above him, her body taut beneath the plain robe. He helped her to ease the front of it up a little and felt her damp and friendly legs against his. ‘Are you staying up there long?’ he inquired.
Barbara had become dreamy. She mumbled: ‘I was just playing’ and languidly rolled away from him. He turned on all fours. Her hands fondled him. Warmth filled him. He pushed away the gown at the front, exposing her stomach and he kissed the cushion. ‘Let’s take our time the next time,’ she suggested half opening her eyes directly in front of his face. ‘I’d like you now, if you don’t mind.’
‘As I am?’
‘As you are,’ she confirmed quietly.
He shuffled towards her, a movement at a time. They touched and joined and he advanced further, his face concerned, hers verging on a smile, her nice nose uplifted, her eyes tightly closed. They moved, tentatively at the beginning, but then firmly and finally with fierce passion. When it was finished they lay languid and relieved, heads together, hands holding. He kissed her nipples with his tongue. ‘I wondered if you’d noticed them,’ she whispered.
‘I was keeping them for later,’ Bramwell said.
‘What happens when you’ve loved me all over?’
‘We go back to the beginning.’
‘You’ll go back to Lettie,’ she teased sadly.
‘But then I’ll come back to you.’ He uncoiled from her. She tugged the bedcover across them. ‘Now you’ve really done it,’ he complained. ‘Mentioning Lettie.’
They lay thoughtfully, scarcely in contact, cooling. She said: ‘What are you going to do about Lettie?’
‘Run away and never come back,’ he said. ‘The trouble with her family is you can’t just throw them out of the house.’ He recited the roll call. ‘Her mother and her brother and our Pauline. They won’t go. Every time they’re off to the pictures I hope against hope they’ll keep going and somehow arrive back in Manila. But they come back. They’re always there when I go home.’
‘What about Lettie?’ she asked.
‘I should never have brought her over,’ he said.
‘Where you live can’t be anything like the Philippines.’
‘Bedwell Park Mansions isn’t a lot,’ he agreed. ‘But … I feel … well, I’m responsible for her.’
‘I’ll say you are. Do you love her?’
‘If I did I suppose I wouldn’t be here with you now.’
‘Or with anyone else,’ she said. She kissed him abruptly. ‘It was lovely, wasn’t it? For a first time.’
Tenderly he traced with his finger from her right nipple, drawing it across her breasts and laying it against the left. They kissed and Barbara said: ‘It’s terrible when two people get together and they do what we’ve just done and then they’ve got nothing else to say. We must find out all about each other.’
‘We could discuss what we’ve just done,’ he suggested. She eased her legs together and in one movement slid from the bed and trailing her robe behind her walked towards the bathroom door. ‘You’re lovely, you are,’ he said lying back against the pillows. ‘I could fall for you.’
She waggled her bottom at him and kicked her leg back around the door.
She bathed and dressed and he followed her. They felt surprisingly comfortable in their friendship. He poured the rest of the champagne and sat on the bed and watched her putting up her hair. ‘There are few better things in life than observing a good-looking woman messing about with her barnet,’ he said watching her over the top of his glass.
‘Could you really fall for me?’
‘I could give it my best try,’ he said. He got up and stood behind her, kissing her on the small of her neck and placing his hands on the skin of her shoulders.
‘Fix my clasp, will you Bram?’ she asked, holding up a gold chain. It was slender and the light of the room caught it like a strand of hair. Carefully he looped it around her neck.
‘The little ring opens and fits into the other little ring,’ she instructed watching him in the mirror.
He did it and said: ‘I’m going to be very useful to you.’
‘I need somebody useful.’
When they left the room they both sensed it was as though they had long been familiar. She had put out all the lamps but one, had tidied the bed and laid her gown across the foot of it. Bramwell opened the door and when they were in the corridor locked it. It was like a known routine.
‘Who looks after the key?’ he said.
‘I’ll put it in my bag,’ she said holding out her hand.
They walked along the carpeted corridor. Briefly he stooped to examine a used tray left outside a door. ‘Room service looks all right,’ he said.
‘We must try it sometime,’ she said. Their fingers locked.
‘Isn’t this surprising?’ she said.
‘You mean, us getting on like this.’ He nodded. They were at the lift.
There was a cobbled street outside, the stones dimpled in the glow of old heavy lamps and the windows of the shops. ‘The concierge knows our secret,’ said Bramwell. ‘Did you see him roll his eyes?’
She had her arm lightly in his and they strolled comfortably. Barbara said: ‘This is the first time we’ve ever walked like this together. We seem to be doing things in the wrong order.’
‘Our romantic concierge has asked the restaurant for a special table,’ Bramwell told her doubtfully. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. You don’t want an order of gipsy violins, do you?’
‘If you promise not to sing,’ she said.
The evening was still genial, the shadows of passers-by were wrinkled on the worn cobbles. People ate at white-clothed tables on the pavement and a youth played an electronic keyboard making a sound like an old hurdy-gurdy. The restaurant was not far. There were diners sitting in the open air but they were led inside and into a separate room. ‘What do you think we’ll talk about?’ asked Barbara.
‘I could tell you some lies,’ he suggested as they surveyed the room.
There was a table set in an alcove and the rest of the area was occupied by two substantial oval tables, each laid for eight. The waiter detected Bramwell’s doubtful expression.
‘Monsieur, it is very good,’ he assured them. ‘Très discret. And we have no more places.’
They sat down and Bramwell ordered drinks. He grinned at Barbara across the table and she reached her fingers towards him. Then she picked up her menu and said, while she read it, and without looking over its top: ‘This is just for fun, isn’t it?’
‘Like a hobby?’ he asked. He peered over his menu.
‘Yes.’
‘You can become engrossed in a hobby.’
‘Obsessed,’ she agreed.
Their serious eyes met and as they did so a party, a family, was led into the room by the head waiter who was patently pleased to see them. They were conversing in cultured but resounding English. ‘Oh God,’ muttered Bramwell. ‘Pretend we’re French.’
The party was arranged around their table by a tall, but slightly stooping, man who had once, it was apparent, been stiffly upright. He had thick hair and gleaming cheeks. ‘Dodo, you sit there,’ he pointed, his voice military. Dodo, a fluffy girl, obeyed, smiling in a docile way. A woman, her hands clasped before her and wearing a black dress and a distraught expression as if she would have rather been elsewhere, placed herself next to the host.
‘And Reggie.’ The man indicated the seat next to Dodo. ‘That looks made for you.’ There were four seats and four young people left. He studied them, first the seats and then the expectant faces and then the seats again, as though deploying forces to the most appropriate positions. ‘Yes … well, Hugh and Prunella, you go next to each other. I’m sure you have lots to discuss. And Tertius here and you jostle in there Bonzo.’
They took their seats and the elder man sat in his and studied the arrangement with satisfaction. ‘There,’ he sighed. ‘How grand that we’re all here reunited again.’
‘And at our table,’ ventured Dodo.
‘Our special table,’ he intoned. She blushed.
‘At our restaurant,’ put in Bonzo dutifully. ‘Anton’s.’
‘In the Rue Smollett,’ added Tertius. He regarded the others smugly.
‘Indeed,’ summed up the father. ‘Here we all are.’
‘In Nice,’ put in his mild and worried-looking wife, having the last word, perhaps uniquely.
They all laughed at their small performance. The elder man caught the eye of the hovering waiter. ‘And I think, since we are here, pastis is called for.’ Without awaiting their approval, he said: ‘Huit pastis, s’il vous plaît.’
‘Would Smollett have approved of Nice now?’ wondered Hugh. He had not contributed to the original exchange and he apparently now considered it his duty to lay the foundation of a discussion.
Bramwell touched Barbara’s hand. ‘I’m afraid this is going to be a performance,’ he said. The waiter appeared and served the moules they had ordered. He poured the wine. None of the party had looked towards them.
‘Doubt if Smollet would approve,’ said the father. ‘A bit of a moaning traveller, you know. Nothing ever really suited him.’
‘He and his wife brought several weeks’ supply of food with them in seventeen whatever it was,’ put in Bonzo.
‘Seventeen something,’ agreed Tertius.
‘Including larks’ tongues,’ said Bonzo doggedly. ‘In aspic. And he just hated garlic.’
‘You’ve been swotting up on Smollett,’ accused Dodo.
They all laughed. ‘On the contrary,’ said Bonzo. The pastis was brought and distributed. They began to explore the menu and as they did so a second party was shown into the room. They piled against each other at the door with shrieks and ribald remarks. The man at the head was younger than the big father at the other table, but he had a stomach. He wore an expensive light suit bent around his middle. His wife, who followed him, sniffed short nervous sniffs and scanned the room as though the whole thing might be a trap. While the pair paused on the short flight of steps the rest, pushing untidily behind, peered around their shoulders. ‘It’s a bit dark, Mum,’ said a perky girl.
‘It’s supposed to be,’ answered one of the males. ‘It’s so you can’t see what you’re eating.’
‘Would you mind,’ demanded the father over his shoulder. He smiled and gave a smooth bow to the diners occupying the first large table. He led his entourage around the room.
‘I’m not sitting next to Dean,’ squeaked the girl. ‘You know what he does.’
‘Don’t want you to,’ said Dean, his hair thick and black as a bucket. The girl was mouse faced and wearing a pink and turquoise dress. ‘’Orrible,’ she said. ‘You are.’
‘Sit down and stop nattering,’ ordered the father. He directed a shrugging smile towards the other table.
‘Yes, sit down, the lot of you,’ put in his wife. Her head was sweating as it projected from a small fur jacket. She had a rose in her gingery hair. Her husband continued: ‘You Josie sit next to Dean. I don’t care what he does. And Mandy pipe down and sit the other side.’ He reached out and contacted a nervous and hovering old lady, not looking at her but feeling for her as someone lost in the dark. ‘And you Mum, you’re there.’
‘I hope I’m going to like it, Bernie,’ she told him.
‘Don’t start moaning already,’ Bernie replied still avoiding looking at her. ‘There’ll be something you can eat.’
‘Didn’t want to come in the first place,’ she grumbled. She sat down and scraped her chair under her. ‘From the start.’
‘Let’s pack up moaning and order some drinks,’ said the father firmly.
‘Not before time,’ said Dean. ‘I could do with a lager.’
‘Pastis, we’re having,’ pronounced Bernie. ‘Like the locals ’ave.’ He peered blatantly over the heads of his own family to the adjoining table. ‘Like those people next door.’ His group, some revolving in their places, peered at the shocked diners at the next table. ‘Eight pastis please squire,’ he ordered loudly. ‘On the rocks.’
‘I only like sticky drinks,’ whined Josie. ‘Is it sticky?’
‘Let your father be the best judge of that,’ put in Bernie’s wife. ‘French drinks usually are sticky.’
Entranced, Bramwell and Barbara watched. Bramwell moved the shells of his mussels around his plate. Barbara avoided his eyes. Silently he poured wine.
Mandy, who had sat so far with vapid resignation, looked up at the fan revolving on the ceiling. ‘Wouldn’t like to get my ’ead caught in that,’ she observed.
‘The fan would come off worse,’ nudged Dean.
Mandy scowled at the menu. ‘Rue Smollett,’ she recited. ‘It’s called the Rue Smollett.’
‘Rue Smell-It more likely,’ giggled Josie pleased with herself.
�
�Garlic, that’s what it is,’ said her mother informatively. Bernie darted looks around the family. ‘Do you mind,’ he said. The pastis arrived and was placed under suspicious noses. Bernie, with a paternal smile, raised his glass. ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Happy holidays.’
‘I’m not drinking that,’ said Josie emphatically having tried it and banging her glass down with equal force.
‘It tastes like ’orrible cough mixture,’ put in Mandy. ‘Like when we used to ’ave coughs, Gran.’
‘That Dean used to be ’acking all night,’ remembered the oldest woman philosophically. ‘Coughing ’is lungs up.’
Bernie said: ‘Well, we’ve come a long way since then.’
‘Paganini died in Nice.’ The father’s intonation from the next table was deep and deliberate. Conversation among his company had been, at first, stilled by the advent of the second party and later exchanged in whispers, but now the original family began to gather its forces. From their alcove table Bramwell and Barbara watched riveted, their entrée almost untouched. Bramwell, pouring the wine, blindly missed the glass. The occupants of the second table, some turning in their chairs, gazed at the occupants of the first and hung on the father’s next words.
‘Playing his violin to the moon,’ continued the senior voice. He, and his family, ignored the attention from the next table. No eye looked in that direction.
‘Mad, I take it, quite mad,’ put in Tertius. ‘Poor Paganini.’
Bernie’s family remained dumbly observing until Josie scraped her chair. ‘English are you?’ she asked cheerily. ‘Like us. Where are you from?’
A frown worked its way around the other table. ‘All over the shop actually,’ offered Tertius at last. ‘Herefordshire, Wiltshire, and … well, of course, London.’
‘Leytonstone we are,’ put in Bernie sonorously, assuming control. ‘Just off Epping Forest.’
‘Near London,’ added his wife. She wagged her hand across the gap between the parties. ‘You ’aving a good time?’
She was answered with mumbles. Two waiters arrived.
‘Ah, here’s our entrée,’ said the first father with hearty relief. He turned half left. ‘So nice meeting you.’
Arrivals & Departures Page 18