After Julius (34 page)

She started to shake her head and tried to move, but he put his mouth on hers then, and it was like a clap of lightning – as though her spine recoiled from the shock. Utterly unknown,
overwhelming; she felt suddenly a stream of sweetness in her mouth – but lighter than sugar, and at once he kissed her more gently. He smelled of summer grass. A lock of his hair fell over
her face; she seemed only to be breathing through his mouth. He had put one hand round the back of her neck: anywhere that he touched she felt was going to break or burn. He stopped kissing her,
tilted her head with his hand and gazed at her: she felt so much that he was searching
her
that she hardly saw him; she was simply the thing he was looking at.

‘You love me, don’t you?’ he said again.

‘Let me talk to you – please, Dan.’

‘We’d never meet
there
,’ he said with scorn. ‘I take no account of how you’ve conducted things in the past. We’ll do this my way.’

‘I haven’t conducted anything . . .’

At once he hit her cheekbone with the flat of his hand – not hard, but it made a lot of noise. ‘I’ve
told
you –1 meant it – I won’t stand you lying:
not to me – about this. I warned you . . .’

Of course she was very frightened: but why don’t I scream – or try to run away? Or something like that? Instead, infuriatingly, she felt herself weakly smiling.
Smiling!
She
said: ‘I won’t tell you any lies – I promise. I just want . . .’

‘I know what you want. Be silent then.’ He knelt upright, and took off his jacket and laid it deliberately on the floor. Then he rolled up the sleeves of his jersey. His forearms
were muscular, very white, with dark-blue veins. ‘That’s better. I’m used to this out of doors – I haven’t lived your kind of life.’ He put his arms under her
shoulders and eased off the bath robe. Then he laid his head on her breasts and started kissing them and her spine kicked again with the shock.

When he stopped, he lifted his head to look down at her. ‘You’re ready for it now, aren’t you?’ He touched a breast. ‘It’s like a hard little raspberry.
Beauty. Don’t you move then.’ He stood up and without taking his eyes off her, undid his belt and stripped off his trousers. ‘I’m ready for you too. See?’ And before
she could have answered, he laid himself full length upon her; she could feel that part of him hard against her stomach, then against her thighs. ‘Shift then,’ he said; ‘make room
for me,’ and as though she had done this all her life, she moved her legs apart. He put one hand round her head, began kissing her mouth. His other hand was touching her down there, parting
her, pressing in till it hurt. ‘You’re resisting me! Don’t do that. You want me. You can’t stop me now.’

He drove into her suddenly – and she cried out, she felt she was breaking inside with the violent pain; she arched her back under his weight as the pain flowered to torture, until she
thought she was going to die from it, and instantly he came in her, and she cried out again and could not stop crying. Then she did not know what happened until she found him stroking her forehead
and moving away the tears streaming down her face with his fingers. His face came into focus, and he looked quite different, and it was he who was whispering. ‘You hadn’t done it
before?’

She tried to shake her head, and managed only to turn away from him.

‘You tried to tell me: I didn’t believe you. You really are mine!

‘Listen to me. I love you. It won’t ever be like that again.’ He turned her face towards him and kissed her with such gentleness that she dissolved into more tears.

‘I want to marry you,
dear
girl. Wait. I’ve got to come out of you. I don’t want to hurt you any more.’ But she was hurting so much that however he moved it was
like a burning bruise; and now she sobbed childishly, for much more than the pain, as though it was the only thing she could do.

‘You must have loved me, to do it.’ He looked anxious now. ‘I’ll take care of you. Don’t cry any more.’ He got up and arranged the bath robe round her
carefully. ‘Look at me. Don’t I look funny like this? You have to smile – seeing a man without his trousers.’

She looked at him: he didn’t look funny to her. Just familiar – the only person she could be with when she felt so broken and weak. She tried to smile and he noticed it, knelt by
her, and mopped her face with the edge of the bath robe.

‘You need a good sleep now. I’m going to take you to your bed. You’re worn out, poor little thing. Relax, now.’

He lifted her up and carried her to her room: pulled back the bedclothes and laid her in the bed. Then he pulled the bath robe, and she felt him very gently drying between her legs.
‘Don’t worry now. I’m mopping you up: I won’t hurt you.’

The sheets felt very cold and she
was
tired – the kind of tired where she wasn’t sure whether she had the strength to shut her eyes.

‘I’m coming in with you,’ he said, and then, watching her face: ‘Just for the warmth and to be friends.’

She heard him taking off the rest of his clothes and then he got into bed, and turned her on to her side. He put one arm round her, stroked her softly and said: ‘Off you go.’ And she
did. She must have fallen asleep on the instant, as she couldn’t remember any more.

When she woke, light was coming through the rusty marigold curtains, and it was lovely and warm, because he had left the gas fire on. She moved, and felt him move against her, and remembered
everything at once about them, and she turned round to see him and he said ‘Good morning, Emma,’ and she said ‘Good morning, Dan,’ and then they didn’t say anything,
just looked at each other for a bit. Then Dan said: ‘
This
is what Sunday mornings ought to be like. You
are
a beauty, you know. I’m not making up to you now –
I’m telling you. And you smell nice.’

She said: ‘So do you,’ and then, because she felt suddenly shy, she buried her face in his shoulder, pretending to smell him.

‘Am I the first man you’ve ever brought here then?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry I hurt you last night.’

‘It’s all right. Honestly.’

‘Honestly,’ he repeated, in her voice.

He sat up in bed, and at once she saw the long, white scar which ran right round one side below his breast bone. ‘What’s that?’ she wanted to say, and just managed not to. He
had picked his vest off the chair and was putting it on, as he said:

‘Don’t worry about my scar. I had a bit of chest trouble once, but it’s all over now.’

‘You had an operation?’

‘Three. The surgeon had to saw off bits of my ribs, his wonders to perform. It’s not a subject I take much interest in talking about. Don’t worry – I got my strength
back.’

They got up, and she tidied things while he made a list of all the things they wanted to do. Then they found it was two o’clock, so they had some sardines, some shortbread, half a banana
and a pot of tea made by Dan. There wasn’t any other food, but they both enjoyed it and ate everything up. Dan’s list turned out to read: ‘Get married. Go to the Zoo. Go to Spain.
Get bloody passport first. Get suitcase out of station.’ Which station? she asked. He couldn’t remember the name, but he could find it by starting from his sister’s flat. Anyway,
they should take things in order. He got rather cross about not being able to get married at a moment’s notice on a Sunday afternoon. He thought it ought to be in the public interest to be
ready for that sort of thing. They might be having a child. This side-tracked them on to their children’s names and it turned out that they would have to have a good many to accommodate both
their tastes in names. It was too late to go to the Zoo, so they decided to get his luggage. She left a note for Cressy asking if she could have the flat to herself for a day or two and telling her
how good everything was. He was standing by her bedroom window while she wrote it.

‘There’s a seagull out there; standing about on a pear tree.’

She joined him.

‘It’s the same one. He always seems to be there.’

‘That’s how I used to feel,’ he said. ‘Wondering how to fill in the time. Till I met you.’

CHAPTER 17

CRESSY

I
N
the car she decided to be passive – to do no more about anything than allow it to happen. This seemed to be a good
decision, but having made it, she couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve been horrible to my mother for years, she thought irrelevantly. Her mother had been very good about that awful
dinner party last night, and then good about them all leaving so suddenly, but Felix didn’t seem to want to discuss her mother, so outwardly she became silent. Inside, she was having one of
those spiky, jeering duologues that always seemed to crop up when she was nervous. Why was she here? Because love mattered more to her than anything else. How did she know that being here had
anything to do with love? How
could
she know that till she tried? But could she tell the difference between having the courage to try something and being a sucker?
Could
she? Or
couldn’t she? Perhaps you have to have the courage to risk being a sucker. Her mother had looked rather lonely when they had left. Breakfast had not been comfortable, but perhaps it was
always difficult if you suddenly felt different about someone you have known for a long time: trying to change your behaviour simply made you a stranger talking to them.

Felix was driving slowly, and when she asked why, he retorted that he wasn’t used either to English traffic or her company and caution was the thing. They lunched in Sevenoaks, and he told
her more about his friends the Lewises – adding that he was supposed to be dining with them that night and did she mind? Oh no, she lied at once (was she not used to this?), but he went on,
‘with you, of course,’ and then she really hadn’t minded. They had had a long, rather horrible lunch which they noticed, without criticism, ending with tepid, muddy coffee in a
draughty passage labelled ‘coffee lounge’.

Then, in the car again, he said: ‘I’d like to take you to an hotel tonight. I’d like to have you entirely to myself, after we’ve had dinner with Jack and Mary. It’s
her treat, this dinner, and I don’t want to let her down. Will you do that?’ It was his plan and she agreed.

When they arrived outside the Lewises’ flat, she said: ‘You go in and tell them you’ve got me with you. I’d much rather.’ But actually meeting the Lewises turned
out to be one of the least straining moments of the day. Mary had been ironing everything both children possessed, and Jack said he’d been reading the papers and snarling at her about the
state of the world. The baby was in a pen with some saucepans. Barney was apparently in a tent under the kitchen table where he was eating biscuits and spilling milk. The Lewises were friendly,
tactfully unsurprised. As soon as Felix felt she liked his friends, he went away to ring up an hotel. It had turned out to be full. At this point they were being discreet about their plans: Felix
simply took the telephone into another room. After he had tried six hotels that were also all full, he came back saying so, and the Lewises were unembarrassingly helpful with telephone directories
and sensible suggestions. But trade conferences, a cat show, and some vast exhibition optimistically connecting the arts and sciences seemed to have used up every hotel in London – even the
very expensive ones that Felix resorted to. It became a kind of game for Jack and Felix to take turns with the telephone – and she still was not taking it seriously: if they were going to an
hotel, an hotel would be found; the actual night seemed far away. By this time they had all had tea and flapjacks made by Mary and the baby had been put to bed. She rang Emma – perhaps
they’d better go there, she had thought, wondering whether the ground would be comfortingly familiar or too familiar, but Emma, when she finally answered the telephone, sounded incoherent
about everything except that she frightfully wanted the flat to herself for that evening. She added that as soon as possible she would be married if not in Spain and
then
Cressy could take
over the flat as she, Emma, would not need it any more, as she thought that Dan would rather live in a boat as he wasn’t keen on a lot of space indoors . . . Here her breath had run out, and
Cressy, who understood the rules (had she not made them, after all?) said that it didn’t matter in the least; she was delighted about Dan; she might come and collect some clothes tomorrow
– she’d ring up first, of course.

They all had a drink, and Jack took over the hotel-ringing. Barney was put to bed, the baby-sitter arrived, and Mary was changing. She was left with Felix and Jack. Felix slept on a camp bed in
the box room, Jack explained, and due to his wife’s
incomprehensible
shape, they could not move from their present bed into the camp one. ‘She’s already broken a
chair,’ he said affectionately: ‘she’d spell instant death to a camp bed with me in it as well.’ They assured him that no thought was further from their minds, that they
would not dream of Jack even considering this, and for a moment they all felt slightly uncomfortable. Mary came back into the room wearing a brown velveteen tent dress which enhanced the air of
splendid bravado she had noticed before in happy and very pregnant women. ‘Well,
I
don’t know,’ Felix had said, putting down the receiver for the hundredth time.
‘I’ve never had so much trouble seducing a woman in my life. Britain’s state of economy
must
be flourishing if all this is going on in November on a Sunday evening.’
Seducing her? Perhaps he was joking to conceal his meaning just that. But he looked at her with such warmth, and as though he knew what she was thinking, that she had felt better again. She offered
to ring Ann Jackson, but Ann proved to have two blind children staying the night with her. It wouldn’t have been the right place to go anyway, and it meant she would have made the plan.

Dinner – Jack and Mary treating them with that blend of indulgence and envy that steadily married couples so often slip into with lovers. This was accompanied by Mary clearly enjoying what
Cressy recognized was a rare treat, and also by the distinct feeling of strain between herself and Felix about what
was
going to happen to them that evening. Perhaps they would not find
anywhere. But, she had realized, this still did not solve
her
problem. If she couldn’t go back to Lansdowne Road, where could she go?