Time and Time Again (25 page)

‘Are you terribly shocked and disgusted?’

‘Christ no! I mean, no. Why would I be?’

‘Why
would
you be?’ Bernadette was very surprised. ‘Because that sort of thing is generally thought to be pretty shocking and disgusting, I should say.’

‘Do you
want
me to be shocked and disgusted?’

‘No. Certainly not.’

‘Well, good. Because I’m not.’

‘Really?’

Stanton wondered where to begin.

‘Look, I know that society currently entertains a lot of prejudice when it comes to gay sex but—’

‘Gay? What’s the fact that it was gay got to do with it, and anyway it wasn’t gay. It was desperate and strange and intense and … well, it certainly wasn’t
gay
. In fact, it was really quite miserable, but I suppose that’s what you get for developing a crush on an
extremely
serious Hungarian feminist.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean “gay” obviously. Wrong word entirely. Can’t think why I said it. I was just saying that obviously I understand that same-sex love is frowned on at the moment …’

‘
Frowned
on! At the
moment
!’

‘Well, you know. I’m sure attitudes will change.’

‘Really? I admire your optimism but I can’t imagine why you’d think that. For me it was a bit of a dalliance, a surprise really, like a holiday romance. But I know quite a few people who choose to live that life exclusively and I can assure you that society makes things very hard for them indeed.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ Stanton replied. ‘But personally I don’t believe a person chooses their sexual preferences at all. To me, it’s self-evident that they were born with them. And I feel very strongly that nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality.’

Bernadette leant across the table and took his hand.

‘Hugh, that’s … that’s a
wonderful
thing to say. An
amazing
thing to say. Where
do
you come up with this stuff?
Nobody should be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexuality.
Hang on while I write it down.’

She went back into the room.

It seemed to take her rather a long time to write down a single sentence and when she returned she was in her underwear.

‘Am I being awful?’ she asked. ‘It’s just that you’re so
interesting
I thought if we weren’t careful we might end up sitting out here talking all night and never … well, never go inside.’

Even in the moonlight he could see that once more she was blushing deeply but the funny thing was Stanton couldn’t actually see any more of her now than he had done before. Her underwear covered pretty much the same parts of her as had her ankle-length hobble skirt, apart from a slightly lower neckline and her bare arms. She was wearing a long white slip, gathered slightly at the waist and tapering in again towards the ankle. Curiously, despite the modesty of the garment Stanton found it incredibly erotic. Perhaps it was the moonlight on her bare white arms. When it came to the sensual power of glimpses of flesh, less could certainly be more. Something the lingerie designers of his century had long since forgotten.

He got up, took her hand and they went back inside the room together and turned out the lamps. Then with the moonlight streaming through the open balcony doors, he stepped towards her and lifted off her slip. The intensity of the moment was quite overpowering. Not only was it the first time he had been with anyone but Cassie in almost ten years but this woman was from
another
time.

1914. In the Vienna moonlight.

He stepped back from her while removing the stud from his starched collar.

She was completely naked save for her silk stockings which were secured above the knee not with suspenders but with garters.

That, however, was not what caught his attention. Nor was it her delightful bosom, larger than he expected but firm. Or the curve of her waist. Or the slight bulge of her belly. Deeply stirring though all those things were.

It was the pubic hair. There was just more of it than he’d expected. Sandy pale, full and curly. Even spreading a little beyond what would one day be known as the bikini line. He should have been expecting it. He
knew
about female pubic hair but he had never encountered it in its natural state. Cassie had waxed. All the girls he’d ever been with had either waxed or shaved, not necessarily the full Brazilian but certainly a
major
trim. He recalled the famous story of the poet Ruskin who it was said could not consummate his marriage because he was so shocked and disgusted by his wife’s pubic hair.

Stanton wasn’t shocked, he just wasn’t used to it, that was all.

In fact, he thought it looked lovely.

‘Well, are you going to take your shirt off or not?’ Bernadette enquired. ‘I’m beginning to feel a bit silly standing here.’

‘Sorry … yes,’ he said, beginning quickly to undress.

They collapsed together on the bed and began to make love.

For a few moments Stanton was consumed with a hungry passion as he gnawed and pawed at Bernadette’s squirming body. It had been well over a year since he’d had sex and this sudden cessation of the drought had brought every nerve in his being to a state of urgent arousal. She too had abandoned herself to primal instinct and wriggled and writhed against him in his embrace, plunging a hand down to grasp away at him.

‘Goodness,’ she gasped. ‘I have missed
these
.’

She was very different to Cassie, who had been more passive, happier to go with the flow. Like any couple who shared a bed exclusively with each other they’d fallen into habits together. Happily enough, but nonetheless he found the thrill of a new and unexplored body and a proactively different approach fiercely erotic.

And that nearly ruined the whole thing.

Thinking about Cassie.

Comparing
Bernadette to her.

His wife. The undisputed love of his life and mother of his children. A surge of guilt swept over him. Almost as if Cassie were in the room and had caught him at it.

He could feel the passion dissipating even as Bernadette chewed hungrily at his mouth. That unwelcome thought. That distraction. A woman could fake it, ignore it till it went away, but with a man the evidence was on display.

In Bernadette’s hand.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘did I do something wrong?’

This was absurd. He wanted this. He needed it. And he had every right to it. And the ridiculous thing was he knew Cassie would agree. Of course she would.

Cassie.
Cassie
. How could he get her to leave the room? To pop next door. Retire to the balcony.

He thought about Bernadette naked. About her revealing herself as she pulled her long slip up her body. Her shapely legs clad in white silk. He thought about her pubic hair. Lush and womanly. Strawberry blonde. Beautiful and actually –
appropriate
.

He put his hand down to touch her, it was so strange. He was used to things being smooth or stubbly depending on the level of maintenance. But this was soft. Warm and giving.
Luxuriant
. Fascinating. He wanted to plunge his whole being deep inside.

‘That’s better,’ Bernadette gasped. ‘
Now
we’re getting somewhere!’

Afterwards they lay together and finished off the wine and Bernadette smoked and snuggled in his arms.

‘That was very nice,’ she said, stretching a leg across his body.

‘Yes, yes it was,’ Stanton agreed.

‘You didn’t leave any … any
seed
in me, did you?’ she asked. ‘Bit late to ask really, but did you?’

‘I don’t think so. I tried to be careful,’ he replied. ‘I think it’s all over your tummy and the sheets.’

‘Good … better out than in, say I.’

Stanton thought how very strange an idea it would be if he
did
get a girl pregnant in this new version of the century. To have children in two separate dimensions of space and time was a mind-boggling thought. A thought which brought Tessa and Bill to mind, his children, who had been his whole life. Who were
still
his whole life.

Except that they were gone. And he was in bed with a woman who had died decades before they were born.

Bernadette must have sensed the progress of his thoughts.

‘You don’t feel guilty, do you?’ she asked. ‘About your wife, I mean … I’m sure she’d understand. Or is that presumptuous of me? Of course, I don’t know what she’d think, obviously. But she would understand, wouldn’t she? She wouldn’t want you to be alone
all
the time.’

‘Yes, I think she’d understand,’ Stanton said, ‘and no, I don’t feel guilty.’

She put her head on his shoulder and kissed his neck. He put his arm around her and they lay together for a while. By craning his chin hard against his chest he could just see her face in the moonlight. It was such a sweet, sweet face.

But now the pretty upturned nose wrinkled a little. She was puzzled.

‘Something up?’ he asked.

‘I thought your watch had stopped,’ she said twisting her head so that she could look at it, ‘but it hasn’t, see, the second hand’s spinning away. I can see the luminous hand.’

‘So what?’

‘Well, it isn’t ticking. Your wristwatch doesn’t
tick
,’ she said. ‘That’s very strange.’

‘Oh it does, just very quietly,’ he assured her.

‘No, it
doesn’t
,’ she insisted. ‘I had it right against my ear and I have very good hearing and it doesn’t tick.’

‘It’s a specialist piece. Very advanced mechanism. Swiss.’

‘Hmm.
Seiko
. Doesn’t
sound
very Swiss.’

‘They’re a very small firm. Very advanced. Years ahead of their time. I do sensitive work. I have to make sure I have the best equipment.’

‘Which brings us to the point, actually. What
do
you do?’ she asked, rolling on to her front, raising her head up and putting her chin on her hands. ‘You are a strange and I must say rather intriguing man. You claim to be a soldier—’

‘Claim? What do you mean,
claim
?’

‘But you’re also a gold-miner from the Australian wilderness. Yet you’ve not only heard of Karl Kraus but you can name his satirical magazine, which is published only in Vienna and which by the way you could read in German. You hold the most astonishingly enlightened views on women and on sex I have ever heard. And you have such a lovely turn of phrase that some of the things you say should be in a dictionary of quotations. You claim to have studied at Cambridge but didn’t seem to remember that they don’t have female students, let alone female professors. What’s more you are as physically fit as any man I’ve ever met, fitter in fact. Your muscles are like iron, which is incidentally
most
attractive to embrace, and so far I’ve noted two scars on your person which I
think
may be bullet scars. You
never
let those two bags of yours out of your sight and you have a watch that
does not tick
. Not even the tiniest bit. Who are you, Hugh Stanton, and, honestly, what do you do?’

‘Well … I
could
tell you,’ he said, remembering an old line from his own century, ‘but I’d have to kill you.’

She smiled.

‘I
hope
you’re joking. Are you a
spy
then?’

‘I’m just a stranger on a train, Bernie. We both are.’

‘
A stranger on a train
,’ she repeated slowly. ‘That does sound romantic.’

‘It is romantic. For me anyway. I can’t think of many things more romantic than bumping into a beautiful girl on the Sarajevo to Zagreb express and then spending a night with her in a moonlit hotel room in Vienna.’

‘Just a night?’

He didn’t answer for a moment. Could he stay? For a little while? Have breakfast on their balcony and then stroll about the city all day and in the evening wine and dine and perhaps even dance. This was Imperial Vienna, after all. And then at the end of the evening return to this very room with Bernadette and …

But he had his mission and he had his secrets. So many secrets. And this woman was very clever and observant and inquisitive.

‘I think perhaps just one night is for the best, don’t you?’ he answered.

‘I suppose, perhaps,’ she said, but very sadly. ‘I think if we made it two I just might fall in love with you and I don’t think I’m very good at love.’

‘Anybody can be good at love. You just have to find the right person.’

‘Did you love your wife a lot?’

‘Yes. I loved her a lot.’

‘I’m sure she deserved it.’

‘She did.’

‘So I just need to find the right person then?’

‘Yes, that’s all.’

‘Not a Hungarian feminist.’

‘Not by the sound of it.’

‘Or a mysterious stranger on a train?’ Her chin was still in her hands and she was looking at him. The moon was behind her, casting her into silhouette, but he could feel her eyes. ‘Best to avoid them, too, you think?’

‘All I know is that I don’t really feel I have anything to offer anybody at the moment. And to be quite frank I rather doubt I ever will.’

‘Emotional baggage?’

‘Yes. Emotional baggage. Rather well-travelled baggage.’

‘What will you do? In the morning, I mean, when I’m tossed aside like a soiled glove and left to skulk out of the hotel alone, forlornly trying to hide my shame?’

‘I have an appointment, in Berlin.’

‘You see!
Appointment in Berlin
– that sounds exactly like a spy novel.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing very exciting. Not as exciting as chaining yourself to the railings outside Buckingham Palace.’

‘That’s not exciting at all. It’s embarrassing and terrifying and horribly uncomfortable. You’ve no idea the hatred we provoke. People jeer and spit, women too. And the police are
horrible
. It’s as if they feel
threatened
. How can a woman chained to a railing be threatening?’

‘You’ll win in the end, you know. One day sex discrimination will actually be illegal.’

‘Sex discrimination?
Wonderful
phrase. Let’s hope you’re a prophet. After all, women do hold up half the sky … Anyway, I think we should forget the future and concentrate on the present. If this is to be our only night together then I think we should make the most of it.’