by Nesta Tuomey
‘It was nothing, Graham,’ she again
By his sudden smile she knew the sound of his name on her lips gave him pleasure. ‘Say it again,’ he urged with that smiling look. When she did, he caught her to him and closed her mouth with a long kiss.
All Kay’s earlier desire to have things outvanished as they continued hand-in-hand over the sand. Unknowingly she had slipped into another phase of her relationship with Captain Pender. Without fully analysing what it might mean for her, she had subconsciously accepted his married state and might never have referred to it, at least not voluntarily, if something had not happened soon afterwards which brought matters to a head.
As they went into the Sanditops Hotel for their usual nightcap, Graham gave a sharp exclamation and hurried her out again. Turning her head, Kay had just time to see a couple seated across the room stare curiously after them. Nothing was said for a few moments. Then, almost at the car, Captain Pender confessed in a low voice that the couple across the bar were his in-laws.
Kay winced and then, unable to bear the thought of hearing the rest of what he had to say, sitting stiffly and unnaturally in the car (and maybe run the risk of being driven home never to see him again), begged in panic, ‘Oh please... please let’s go back down to the beach.’
Partly understanding, Graham nodded. Observing her shiver and hug her arms to her chest, he caught up the car rug and brought it with him.
As they went back through the barley field he gave her a rather hang-dog look and said haltingly, ‘I know it was wrong not to tell you before but I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you. I did try in the beginning to keep away from you, you may remember. God knows, I did my best.’
And how I prayed you’d come back, thought Kay miserably.
They crossed over the railway tracks and stepped down on the beach once more. Overhead, the sky had turned to navy and was edged with paler streaks of cobalt. In the shelter of two rocks, on a patch of beach grass, Graham laid the car rug, then seating himself a little way off, continued in a grim voice.
‘Of course, I realise now if I’d been more honest I could have stopped this... this,’ he waved a hand helplessly searching for a suitable word to describe what existed between them, came up with ‘infatuation...’ Clearly dissatisfied, he struck it out in favour of ‘loving passion... On my part at any rate,’ he quickly added, letting her out but clearly wishing to believe it was reciprocated.
Oh but it was, Kay thought fervently, he must surely know it was. She gazed wistfully at his aloof profile and longed for him to come and sit beside her.
‘My marriage hasn’t been particularly happy, not for a long time,’ Graham told her in a low voice, ‘but I suppose it’s no worse than a lot of marriages.’ He paused, then said a little wretchedly; ‘God knows there was love in the beginning but somewhere along the way the special quality went out of it. No one’s fault, my wife has had her own share of trouble...’
Kay winced. How appallingly it hurt to hear him speak like this.
‘Nerves and so on... which I prefer not to go into. Perhaps we might have separated if it hadn’t been for our two sons. As it is we lead fairly separate lives.’
He shrugged and fell silent, thinking of Jeremy and Nicholas. Those two meant more to him than anything in the world. They filled him with a sense of joy and the kind of fulfilment that his relationship with Sile never had, and never would. He felt a sudden pang realising that his present actions might lose him their unquestioning love and, at the same time, a thrill of panicking recognition that what he had embarked on so cautiously at first with the girl beside him, had become so vitally necessary to him now.
Kay patted the rug, ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘come and sit beside me.’
He was so terrifyingly distant from her, she thought. At any minute he might get up and walk right out of her life.
After a moment’s hesitation, he came over and dropped down wordlessly beside her. He lit a cigarette and gazed abstractedly at the darkening horizon.
‘I knew you were married,’ Kay blurted, feeling that if he thought she had willingly continued to meet him while knowing the true state of affairs, it might relieve some of the guilt he clearly left at deceiving her.
‘You knew!’ he looked at her, unconvinced.
‘Yes, for quite a while,’ she lied. ‘I shared a flight with Penny Norton and...’ Graham cut sharply across her. ‘What did she say to you?’
‘N...nothing,’ Kay stammered, taken aback by his fierce expression. Whatever about Penny’s declared fondness for Graham, it didn’t seem now as though he returned her regard. ‘I overheard her discussing crew members, that’s all.’
She could have cried for the severity of his expression but it only lasted a second. Then his features relaxed and when he smiled that devastating smile of his, she felt almost dizzy with relief.
‘Forgive me. I’m not angry with you.’ He caught her hand contritely and bent his dark head to kiss it. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said wearily, ‘How you must wish you’d never set eyes on me.’
‘Oh no,’ Kay’s voice cracked slightly on the word, glad only that she hadn’t caused that grim, unforgiving expression. ‘I could never wish that, no matter what.’
She had no guile, attempted no subterfuge to hide her true feelings from him. ‘You darling!’
At once his arms were around her drawing her close and there was no hint of anything but tenderness in his expression as he bent over her. His kisses bruised her lips and throat and something wild in her leaped to meet his passion. Her slim body pressed against him as they lay on the rug and her arms were silken ropes holding him to her, her satin smooth shoulder a haven for his aching forehead. Screened by the rocks, they lay in the sandy hollow under the dark canopy of the sky, the hush hush of the waves advancing and receding behind them.
Supposing someone comes, was Kay’s half-formed thought, succeeded by, I don’t care, Oh I don’t care, as he removed the last of her clothing. Shyly, yet intoxicated by his eyes taking in the whole lovely length of her, she lay like some pearly mermaid washed up on the shores of his kingdom.
‘How beautiful you are,’ he murmured. ‘A true Aphrodite.’
He traced the swell of her breasts and stomach with a slow caressing hand.
‘No,’ she whispered in answer to a solicitous enquiry as to whether she was cold.
She felt quite warm in fact ad strangely without shame, her nudity all the more deeply felt as still fully dressed, he bent to force her mouth apart with kisses. She was fancifully reminded of a Velasquez painting in which a swooning buxom maiden is ravished by a nobleman still attired in cloak and sword, and felt further aroused by the image. At the same time, she was conscious of the exhibitionist impulse to impishly run, to be chased and borne to the ground. But when he had set aside his shirt and pants and lowered his hard muscled body on to hers, even while she became more excited, Kay grew afraid.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered.
At once he moved away, and burying his face in her neck, murmured soothingly, ‘Don’t worry, darling. I won’t do anything.’
She relaxed against him and enjoyed the comforting feeling of flesh upon flesh and his hands roaming freely over her body beneath cover of the rug he had pulled up cosily about them.
Dave sat before the television some evenings later taking a break from his studies but his thoughts were not on the screen. He was disturbed by certain remarks his mother had made earlier about Kay, and he was mulling them over in his mind.
‘So it looks very like he’s married,’ she had said, at her most irritatingly obscure. ‘What are we talking about?’
‘Kay... your air hostess friend. She’s having an affair with a married man. I mean it’s obvious. A man like that so good-looking and prosperous with an expensive sports car and all - according anyway to Ginny Halpin - doesn’t get to that age without being snapped up.’
Dave stirred restlessly. If Kay was in love - he winced at the word - he supp
osed it must be with some married pilot. Somehow it hurt more than he thought possible picturing her in the arms of such a man. But there could be no future in it, he consoled himself. At least that was something.
Lately, Dave hadn’t seen much of Kay. The last time was the day she had been made permanent with Celtic Airways. He had happened to call round that evening and she had delightedly told him her news. Florrie had been there too and the three of them had gone round to the pub to celebrate.
‘What about you?’ he had smilingly asked the fair-haired girl as the three of them linked arms along the road. ‘Are you still in limbo?’
‘Afraid so,’ Florrie grinned, but after their recent letter of commendation she was happy about her chances.
Dave liked Florrie, and only he favoured dark-haired beauties he might even have fallen for her. Now he supposed that Kay could be considered to be fully launched on her career. Secretly, he had hoped she might have got over her obsession with flying, but if anything she seemed more enamoured than ever. Certainly it seemed to suit her. That night he had never seen her look prettier or happier. Because she was in love?
Suddenly, Dave decided to abandon his study plan for the night and go round to see her. A month earlier he had sat the first part of his accountancy exams and judged he had done fairly well. Soon he would be hard at it again, he told himself, but in the meantime he owed himself a break.
In his bedroom, he gave in to a sudden impulse and stripped off what he was wearing to change into a new sports shirt and smartly creased pants. He slapped on some of the scented after-shave Kay had given him for Christmas - he hadn’t got around yet to opening the one she had brought him back from Spain. Must be getting commission on the stuff, he thought in amusement.
As he walked briskly up Carrick Road, the heady scents came intermittently on the gentle breeze, reminding him of other summers. In another few days it would be July. He was almost at Kay’s house when he became aware of a white sports car parked at the kerb. At the wheel lounged a dark-haired, exceptionally handsome man. As their eyes made contact, Dave felt a shock of recognition. It could only be the married pilot, he thought, and felt a rush of fury. The man was so damned good-looking and self-assured.
With a grim set to his jaw, Dave strode on past the house, all thought of seeing Kay that night gone from his head. He made his solitary round of the block and returned home to study.
THIRTY ONE
In August Kay flew to London with the express intention of visiting a birth control clinic. Earlier in the summer she had made a point of filing a request in the book for her two stand-off days together, and when it was granted she decided to take the opportunity to cross the water and solve a problem that had been worrying her for some time.
Now as she sat in the clinic waiting-room her heart palpitated nervously. Across from her two women sat deep in conversation, their lined faces denoting them to be at the opposite end of the female scale to herself, while nearby a man busily chain-smoked.
The wait was beginning to tell on Kay’s nerves too. She shifted restlessly on the hard bench and for the umpteenth time examined the posters on the wall. As soon as she had read one, her eyes strayed to the next, then back to start all over again. They made compulsive reading and all of them shared the same universal message.
‘You Can Get Pregnant If It’s The First Time!’... ‘You Can Get Pregnant During Your Period!’... ‘You Can Get Pregnant Standing Up!’... ‘You can Get Pregnant (the last intriguing caption ran) If HE Says It’s All Right!’... seeming to suggest that men weren’t to be trusted in such matters.
Kay found such frankness a bit daunting. Back home such things were not talked about and might even be illegal! She wasn’t sure, that’s why she had chosen to come to an English clinic to seek advice on contraception.
Her eyes fixed on the posters, she thought how intimate it all was this man/woman thing so blatantly and pessimistically displayed on the clinic walls. And what pressure there was all the time on women to give in and have sex. That Graham had so far held off was a source of never ceasing wonder to Kay, though not something she could hope to count on anymore. She sighed, remembering their last meeting on the beach when passions running high the whole situation had almost got out of hand.
What a hot night it had been. Sweltering! For weeks they had been enjoying a spell of untypically hot Irish weather and even yet it was holding fine. The thought of a swim had kept Kay going all that day as she had completed a double duty to Edinburgh and the Isle of Man. When she landed, she had hurried home to be ready for Graham when he called.
Later, strolling with him through the barley field down the narrow track to the sea, she had been reminded of the passing of time in the rippling abundance of the pale sheaves. It seemed like a lifetime since the night in June when he had admitted to being married and they had ended up making passionate (if unconsummated) love on the sands.
Even after two months, Kay was still a little awed at the physical intensity of Captain Pender’s feeling for her and hers for him and such thoughts were making her cheeks glow as they arrived on the sands. As she prepared to slip modestly behind a rock he pulled her into his arms.
‘Let’s not wear anything tonight, darling,’ he whispered huskily, ‘You’ll be quite safe, I promise you... no one will see us.’
Trembling before him, Kay felt that it was one thing to be undressed at the height of passion, quite another to take off everything while being watched with such avid, burning attention. For a long moment, he gazed at her naked full-breasted young body, then quickly divesting himself of his own garments, took her hand and ran with her down to the water’s edge.
Glad of the thickening darkness, Kay cautiously dipped a toe in the water while Captain Pender watched her hesitation with a slight smile before plunging in himself and striking out to sea. She lingered in the shallows wishing he would come back, and shivered as a wave washed coolly about her waist, slapped spitefully at her breasts. Overhead the sky turned black, pricked by a handful of stars.
Suddenly she felt herself lifted in the water.
‘You’re like some lovely sea-nymph risen out of the waves to tempt me,’ Graham breathed in her ear, then waded out of the sea, pulling her with him.
As she hurried breathlessly with him over the sand, Kay was extremely conscious of the strong straight beautiful legs striding along beside her and was suddenly shy of the immensity of the thing standing out before him. Not for the first time, she felt an awed wonder at how men lived with such an encumbrance.
‘Look what you’ve done to me,’ he said with a meaningful downward glance as they reached the rug.
She snatched up a towel and wrapped it about herself but he stripped it away again and she felt a tremendous clamouring urge to hold and be held. Gasping, she clung to him, moaning a little, and pressed even closer, aware of the danger but helpless against this tiding feeling weakening her mind and will.
And then they were on the rug and his hands were under her hips, lifting and holding her against the hard ridge of his body until she thought she would faint. At the last moment she had cried, ‘No... Wait!’ And when he had suddenly pulled away from him she was at first conscious of relief, then a desolate aching regret that she had not allowed him inside her.
‘I don’t think you realise the power you have over me, Kitty,’ he chided gently. ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer for another time.’
His words had both thrilled and alarmed her. While paying tribute to her sexuality he seemed at the same time to be opting out of responsibility. The message was clear. Any further lovemaking between them would be at her own risk.
Kay’s preoccupation, obsession maybe, with remaining virginal (technically at least) was something they had never discussed. From an early age, Molly had strongly impressed upon her that nice girls did not go to bed with a man until married to him.
To Kay her aunt’s view seemed more a matter of common sense, than morality.
According to M
olly, once a man took that precious state of virginity ‘above rubies, above pearls’ - even at such moments her aunt couldn’t resist being theatrical - he couldn’t retain any respect for a girl. And love having died a death, Molly would briskly conclude her sermon, the poor unfortunate would be cast off like an old glove.
Kay saw some sense in what her aunt advocated, for unless it was all a huge spoilsport conspiracy to prevent women from having a bit of a fling, it could just legitimately be for their own protection. Molly’s often quoted dictum ‘The woman always suffers’ did have a ring of truth to it. Even in her own limited experience of life, Kay had seen that it was the woman who was inevitably left carrying the burden. No one could deny that in the case of the anonymous pilot versus the pregnant hostess - Kay shivered at how close that was to her own situation - the man had got off scot-free and the hostess’s name dragged in the dirt.
If she were to ‘give-in’ - she couldn’t help thinking of it in one-sided terms though she was as inflamed as Graham - she knew she would suffer such a drop in self-esteem as to be wretched, not happy ever after. She envied girls like Orla, who unless she read her wrong, could let a man do it and still be able to think well of herself afterwards.
‘I don’t care to think what could happen if you were to be so free with anyone else,’ Graham had said with a troubled look. ‘That damned ass Tully... or Cooney.’ He was unable to go on.
Kay shuddered. It was only too true. Neither pilot could resist taking such a come-on to its logical conclusion.
Sensing her distress, Graham tightened his arm about her and said in a low voice, ‘I don’t want to frighten you but you’re so sweet and desirable I can’t imagine any man being able to control himself given a similar situation. I damned well nearly didn’t myself.’
His words cut Kay to the heart. As if she would dream of behaving like this with anyone else. After all, who was it who had begged and begged until she went skinny dipping? A sense of unjustness overwhelmed her. It was so unfair! So damned unfair!
