Guilty Pleasures (27 page)

“My dear Millie, I don’t want to break any rules, but would it be amiss to invite you two young people to join me for dessert and a glass of bourbon?”

Millie glanced at Lance and smiled. “We would be honoured, Mrs. Belmont. Will, would you be so kind as to provide the glasses?”

Lance dashed into the kitchen and found a grinning Serge setting up a tray with two wine glasses, three dessert bowls, and the enticing rice pudding topped with soft swirls of meringue. “Serge, were you . . .” Lance gestured towards the small salon. “Listening?”

“Oh no, she always likes company for dessert, and tonight she’s got fresh meat. Virgin ears for all her old stories. You’re gonna love it; she’s phenomenal.”

Lance nodded and carried the dessert in.

“He wasn’t my first, you know, dear. My very first love was Harvey Campbell. I adored Harvey, and he didn’t know I was alive. Then one summer, when we were both very young, he had a slight bout of polio. We were all so afraid, but luckily, it was very mild. Still, he was bedridden for months.”
 

Lance nodded, and Millie smiled in anticipation.

“My mother suggested that in the name of the old friendship between our families, I offer to read to Harvey every afternoon. His mother agreed, and I seized my chance. I broke into my grandfather’s locked cupboard in our library and made off with a leather-bound, illustrated first edition of Sir Richard Burton’s banned translation of
The Thousand and One Nights,
and a quite liberal version of Ovid’s
Amores
.”

Millie giggled as Lance set down the tray, spooned the creamy dessert into the bowls, and poured a modest portion of bourbon into the glasses.

“Fill those up! There’s a good boy,” Mrs. Belmont ordered. “Anyway, Harvey and I dedicated ourselves to the pursuit of a classical education. Most beneficial. Did wonders for his recovery. We waited a few busy years and got engaged, and then came the war. Harvey couldn’t go, of course, because of that leg. But I lost him anyway. A car accident in Devon. I was devastated. I become a nurse, joined the war effort, and then one night there was an air raid.” She paused, knocked back the last of the bourbon, and extended the glass to Lance for a refill.
 

Lance quickly obliged.

“I was out with some girlfriends, dancing. We were living it up like there was no tomorrow, and for some of us there wasn’t. So when the sirens went off, we kicked off our heels and we ran to the nearest metro station. We sat there in the dark, just waiting. It didn’t seem real, you know, none of it. It was like some strange fever-induced dream.”
 

Millie nodded, shivering.

“There was a young man sitting next to us on the platform, his legs hanging over the edge, crying. I moved over to comfort him; we were all so afraid. He was an American—an airman on leave—just a small town farm boy. He couldn’t stop sobbing. He flew a bomber and he’d been raiding across the Channel, bombing German cities, and I suppose he’d finally realised . . . there are no winners in any war, and no heroes.”

“What happened, Mrs. Belmont? What did you do?” Lance asked.

“I held him, comforted him, and I fell in love with him. We walked out of there into a changed world. He was going back up in three days.
Carpe diem
. We were married that very afternoon. I was in a haze, a dream . . . we had dinner at this small pub. Dried pea soup, turbot leftovers masked with this lumpy white sauce, and rice pudding made with black market sugar. One of Edgar’s friends gave us a bottle of this hideous rotgut Tennessee bourbon, no champagne. And it was wonderful—ambrosia.”

Millie nodded. “Love is the very best condiment!”

Smiling, Mrs. Belmont dug her spoon into her pudding and savoured it, eyes closed.
Exquisite
. “The wedding night, alas, wasn’t such a success. Oh my, was I surprised.”

Lance raised his eyebrows, perplexed.

She leaned in confidentially. “I had heard that some farm boys learn their lovemaking skills watching cows. Some of them learned
with
cows. I didn’t know if this was true or not, but I girded myself up and decided to work with what I had: the skills I had acquired with my very agile dear Harvey, my own delectable body, the fact that Edgar was hung like a horse, and his own eagerness to learn.” A sly smile removed fifty years from her features. “I was an excellent teacher,
and
I had a dedicated student. In fact, we were
still
learning when he—”

Millie reached over and held Mrs. Belmont’s hand in hers.
 

Sudden tears flooded the old lady’s eyes. “He went as he came, so to speak . . .”

“Um, so-so sorry, Mrs. Belmont,” Lance stammered out.

“Goodness, don’t be. He was eighty-seven, and still going strong. He would have hated to . . . be diminished. I miss him. I miss
all
of him. He was my love.”

Millie’s eyes filled with sympathetic tears.
 

Mrs. Belmont looked significantly at Millie. “Don’t think age makes you less of a woman, my dear, or less desiring or less capable of a new love. One thing I’ve learned in my life is that there is only one first love, but you are open to one
last
love till the very day you die. Goodnight, my darlings.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Belmont, and God bless you.” Lance bent over her hand, and placed a gentle kiss on her fragile skin.
 

Mrs. Belmont got up, tucked Edgar firmly under one arm, her purse under the other, and walked with commendable firmness towards the door.

They quietly tidied up the remnants of Mrs. Belmont’s love feast, solemnly toasted each other with the last drop of the bourbon, and took the lot back to the kitchen.
 

Serge, happily puttering about, had already finished with the modest disarray and cheerfully popped the rest of the dirty dishes into the machine. “Quiet-like, ain’t you? Old lady got to you?”

“No, quite inspiring, actually. A brave, resourceful lady. I loved her,” Lance said.

“I think if she’d been a few years younger, you’d be in love, Will,” Millie said.

“No worries. I’d have been afraid to face down the redoubtable Edgar.”

Serge turned off the main lights and sensibly said goodnight. “See you at four tomorrow morning, Willie-Millie.” He stumped away leaving them alone in the dimly lit kitchen.
 

They stood in sudden awkward silence, broken only by the rhythmic watery rush of the dishwasher.

Lance waited, prolonging the silence painfully, skilfully—forcing her to make the next move. She stood hesitantly, then moved to the back and returned with a bottle of red wine and two delicate long-stemmed glasses. She uncorked and poured the wine in silence, and extended one of the glasses to Lance.
 

“To Mrs. Belmont, Edgar, and let’s not forget poor Harvey, who was ultimately responsible for making their marriage a success,” Millie said.

Lance clinked his glass against hers. “I think you forget,
Mrs. Belmont
seduced poor Harvey in his sickbed, luring him to sinful pleasure with Ovid and Scheherazade.”

Millie giggled. “She certainly cured him of his limp.”

Lance burst out laughing, a delicious sensation of well-being invading him.
This
was where he was meant to be—this place, this moment, this woman. He moved towards her. “Millie . . .”

She held up her hand. “Please, Will, let me go first, okay?” She fell silent, gulped at her wine, and removed a large brown envelope from her purse. “I wanted to make sure everything was very honest between us, very open . . . that is very important to me.”
 

“Millie, I agree with you. Please, whatever you need to say, I’m listening. I’m here for you.”

“Well, in the interests of clarity, I . . . um . . . asked my solicitors to draw up a statement wherein you clearly declare you are not being pressured or harassed into a sexual relationship, that you renounce the right to any claim, to any form of compensation or redress at law. You can read it. It’s quite clear, really. It’s a simple disclaimer releasing Guilty Pleasures, and myself, from any kind of civil responsibility should we start a sexual relationship.”

Ice-cold and dazed, Lance stared at her. He picked up the envelope from the counter, opened it, and skimmed quickly through it. Plucking a pen from Serge’s notice board, he initialled every page and swiftly signed. He slipped the agreement back into its envelope and handed it to her. Without a word, he turned and left, walking slowly, barely feeling the ground beneath his numb feet.
 

Millie carefully tucked the disclaimer back into its envelope. She locked up and as she headed home, she knew that somehow, something had gone awry.

From the Diary of Millicent Deafly:

Will signed the agreement. Somehow I don’t think it went down very well. He acted so strangely; he just signed and walked away.
 

No goodnight, no kiss, no nothing. A quite hideous twinge tells me I might have just screwed up
big time
, as Serge would say. It was like watching a light go out.

I think I fucked up . . . really, really fucked up.

Damn, damn, damn.

I have this awful suffocating pain in my chest. I wish I still knew how to cry.

Okay, I confess. I knew, as I did it, as I looked into those hopeful eyes, that it was a mistake. I knew it, and I still fucked up.

Why? Am I such a coward that I’d rather blow a chance at something wonderful just to avoid a risk? Did I do this so he would end it? Walk away?

So I could say to myself that I tried . . . did my best . . . that I opened up and he walked away?
 

Chapter 19

All women expect exclusivity. If a woman offers you an open relationship, be sure the roving eye being catered for is
not
yours.

Don’t go there!

Threesomes make for a very awkward geometry. If anyone gets left out—remember Murphy’s Law—it’s bound to be you.

If you want a full relationship with your woman, to get into every piece of her heart and mind, be faithful.

If you can’t be, then
be gone
.

—Sensual Secrets of a Sexual Surrogate

That night, Lance lay motionless on his bed. A feeling of dislocation overwhelmed him. He felt brutally alone, disappointment filling his mouth with a dry, sour taste.