Forbidden Places

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Not terribly I don’t suppose,’ said Charles, clearly irritated. ‘And I’ll check the floor myself. Anything else while we’re there?’

  ‘No, no, that’s fine,’ said Grace. ‘Thank you. I hope you like it, Clarissa.’

  Clarissa did. She came flying into the drawing room, where Grace was pretending to read Country Life, and flung herself beside her on the sofa.

  ‘What heaven! Oh you are so lucky. I told Jack it was enough to turn us into country-dwellers too. You will ask us to stay lots, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes of course,’ said Grace, trying not to sound short.

  They were alone in the room; Clarissa looked at her rather piercingly. ‘Grace, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace, ‘thank you.’

  ‘You’re not, are you? What is it? Darling, tell. Is it because of me and Charlie? I really, really wouldn’t blame you. I was so shocked and furious when I found he hadn’t told you. Men are so dense, aren’t they? So thoughtless and dense.’

  ‘Some men, yes,’ said Grace. ‘But no, really, Clarissa, I’m fine. Thank you.’

  ‘Good. Because I do so want us to be friends. And I do promise you, there’s been nothing between us for years. Ever since I broke it off.’

  ‘I thought it was by mutual agreement,’ said Grace. ‘Breaking it off, I mean.’

  ‘Well, yes, yes of course it was,’ said Clarissa hurriedly. ‘But you know,’ she added with a quick little laugh, ‘one has one’s pride.’

  Grace, looking at her, saw a flush rising on the creamy skin, a slight tension behind the lovely brown eyes. And then she said, very seriously, quite a different person suddenly, and it was the most extraordinary moment, one Grace never forgot: ‘He is not an easy person to know, Grace. You must realise that.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grace briefly (although she longed to ask her more, ask exactly what she meant, but she too had her pride), ‘yes I do. Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ said Clarissa quickly, ‘Well, that’s all right then. Now I must go and find my darling Jack, and we must make our way back to the soot.’ She stood up, smiling. ‘And I’ll see you at the wedding, Grace darling. You’re going to look wonderful, I simply can’t wait.’

  Grace smiled at her rather feebly and followed her out to the hall.

  She did look wonderful. Everyone said so. She could even see it herself, staring at herself in the long mirror in her bedroom, quite awed at the dazzling creature she had become, taller somehow and so slender in the drifting fall of her dress, her red-gold hair drawn up under the tiara. As she came down the stairs of Bridge Cottage in her dress, smiling at her parents, at the bridesmaids, the bridesmaids’ mother, who were all standing there, her mother burst into tears. ‘Oh Grace,’ she said, ‘oh Grace. Oh my dear.’

  Later when they had all gone, and she was alone in the house with her father, waiting to leave for the church, he gave her a kiss. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ he said, and blew his nose hard. ‘So very proud.’

  ‘Father,’ said Grace gently, ‘I’m very proud of you too. And Mother. And thank you for everything. Everything.’

  The service was perfect: the organist had been practising for weeks the rather difficult piece to which Grace had chosen to make her entry (the March from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus rather than the predictable ‘Here Comes the Bride’); the choir surpassed itself, even William Everton whose sublime voice was only matched by his naughtiness and who could usually be relied upon to come in at the wrong moment, or not come in at all because he was examining the contents of his pockets and had been known to release a beetle or a few worms, and once even a field mouse, into the choir stalls; the vicar gave a most moving address, saying he had known and loved Grace since she was brought to him for baptism and that Charles was truly the most fortunate of men, inspiring a great many tears and much clearing of throats by the guests.

  It was a perfect day, warm for May; the sunshine streamed in a great golden rush through the windows, and Mrs Boscombe, who doubled up as the flower committee at the church when she was not working on the switchboard, had surpassed herself, with two great urns on either side of the altar steps filled with white tulips and lilies, and had knotted tiny posies of sweetheart roses onto the end of each pew.

  Grace did not stumble as she came down the aisle, nor did her knickers fall down; rather, on her father’s arm, sweetly composed, she seemed to float towards her Charles and the expression on her face as she looked at him prompted even Muriel Bennett to look rather stern and start feeling for her handkerchief and Clifford to dash his hand briefly across his eyes.

  And as she came out of the church into the sunshine, the photographer (nice friendly Martin Fisher from Shaftesbury, insisted upon by Grace in preference to the smart firm from London proposed by Muriel) saw her turn to Charles and move into his arms, and for a brief moment there was clearly nobody else in the world for them, nobody at all.

  The reception was splendid: the champagne delicious, the food wonderful, the speeches very funny (Frank Marchant’s especially so, everyone said so), and there was such a feeling of happiness, of well-wishing, of bonhomie, such an absence of any kind of criticism, of a sense of opposing factors, that Grace wondered how she could ever have worried for a moment about it at all. Through the happy haze of her day, she kept seeing cameos that surprised her even as they delighted: Clarissa with her arm linked through her father’s, Clifford Bennett talking, sweetly serious, to her mother, Florence (Florence!) dancing with the little bridesmaids, Laurence hugging her and telling her he was so jealous of Charles he could hardly bear to look at him, Robert most courteously escorting Aunt Ada to a chair before the speeches began, Jack carefully filming (with the wedding present camera) every word of her father’s speech.

  And then at last it was over; and she was actually, finally and quite unbelievably Mrs Charles Bennett.

  Chapter 6

  Summer 1939

  And now she was really a married woman. One mind and one flesh. Only she didn’t really feel one mind with Charles; her mind was actually rather distant from his, she thought, and she wasn’t quite sure about the one flesh either.

  It had gone on being perfect for a while; they had driven away in the MG (with tin cans and toilet paper tied onto it, and a big silver horseshoe and ‘just married’ painted on the window) and the last thing she had seen as the car pulled out of the drive had been her mother, crying yet again into her handkerchief. Half a mile down the road Charles had stopped and kissed her, rather violently, but then he was very drunk, and then they had driven on again, to Salisbury, which was quite a long way, and from there had got the train to London. They had had the carriage all to themselves, and Charles had pulled down the blind and started kissing her again, and at first she had responded, but then she began to feel slightly sick, with all the champagne and the excitement, and he had realized it and pulled back from her and said, ‘Are you all right?’ and he was clearly trying not to sound irritated.

  And ‘Yes’ she had said, carefully, ‘yes, fine, just tired,’ and he had said, ‘Oh I’m sorry, darling,’ but he hadn’t sounded terribly sorry, and then he had gone to sleep and snored, and very slowly Grace’s happiness had begun to seep away from her.

  They were spending the night in London, at the Dorchester Hotel; it was Clifford’s personal wedding present to them, he said they deserved to start their married life in style. Grace suddenly remembered his words as she lay there, in the great bed that was obviously designed for the most spectacular love-making, and felt – what did she feel? She didn’t even know. Only that what had happened between her and Charles, while perfectly satisfactory, she supposed, had hardly seemed to have a great deal to do with love.

  She eased her legs over the edge of the bed and very stealthily got up and went into the bathroom. There was a chair in there; she pulled the pink satin bedjacket round her shoulders (thinking it had been something of a waste) and sat there, looking through into the bedroom and the inert heap that was
Charles beneath the bedclothes. A contented, clearly satisfied Charles; well, that was all right, that was good. What wasn’t quite so all right was that he was also equally clearly self-satisfied. And she didn’t really like that very much.

  They had had dinner, a dinner which Grace really hadn’t wanted; she still felt sick, and she was excited and yes, all right, nervous as well. Charles ate three courses very heartily and drank a lot of red wine, and then the band began to play and they danced for a while, and then he said, ‘Time for bed I think, Mrs Bennett’ and kissed her and she felt happier again suddenly, the day restored to its brightness, and they had gone up to their room, and he had said, just slightly awkwardly, ‘You first,’ and she had gone into the bath room and washed, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair and sprayed on some of her Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass cologne and undressed into the pink satin, just the night-dress, and then gone into the bedroom and climbed rather quickly into bed. Charles had already undressed and was wearing some rather fiercely striped pyjamas; he disappeared into the bathroom very briefly and then came back, smiled at her, and turned the dim bedside lights abruptly off. Grace had been disappointed by that somehow; she had been looking forward to some kind of courtship, kissing and caressing and talking; told herself they had plenty of time for that, and slithered down in the bed, and into Charles’s arms.

  ‘Oh Grace,’ he said, and the voice was the one she remembered from the day of the quarrel, a different voice, slightly harsh, almost impatient, ‘Grace, it’s been a long time.’ And after that she had lain there, and he had made love to her, and when he had finished he had gone to sleep; and from beginning to end she had seemed to play no part in it at all.

  She was, of course, very lucky in a way, she could see that. He had known exactly what he was doing (she thought back to her diffident, embarrassed enquiry as to whether he was a virgin and felt quite horribly foolish), had removed her nightdress with speed and skill, had kissed her for a while before turning his attention to her breasts, had kissed and stroked them most expertly, calling up piercingly loud echoes of the more muffled sensations she had experienced over the months of their courtship, had moved his hands down to her thighs, her stomach, her buttocks, smoothly, confidently, and then, just a trifle more tenderly, she had felt his hand between her legs, feeling, seeking, stroking, probing, but gently; then he had rolled away from her briefly, fumbling for something at the side of the bed (the contraceptive, she supposed) and turned back towards her, and said, nicely, but quite firmly, not lover-like at all, ‘Now just relax, darling, relax.’ Then he had been on top of her, and she could feel it now, his penis, pushing gently at first, then more firmly into her, into her vagina, and she had been not afraid, but slightly tentative, resistant, and he had said again, more firmly still, ‘Relax, just relax,’ and then went on pushing smoothly in, kissing her at the same time. And it did hurt, a little, but not as much as she had expected; it had been accomplished with such gentle competence. And then she really did begin to feel something, a slow stretching into something that was close to pleasure; he was thrusting now, but still not painfully, slowly and carefully, and then rather faster, and she was trying to follow him in some strange way, but afraid to at the same time, afraid of doing the wrong thing, and suddenly there was a deep, deep push and she wanted that to go on and on, and she felt a slightly distant throbbing, not from herself but from him, and he lay still and then, and she never forgot that moment for the rest of her life, he said, ‘Good, darling, very good,’ and rolled off her, kissed her briefly, asked her if she was all right, and when she said yes – for what else could she say? – he repeated ‘Good’ and kissed her again and fell immediately asleep.

  And Grace had lain there and relived it all and wondered, since it had really been much more pleasurable and less painful than anything she could have expected from the first time, from the rather veiled hints from her mother and her married friends, and even the literature Dr Phillips had given her, why she was feeling let down, lonely, even a little sad. And then she realized that while Charles had been extremely competent, skilful even, he had said nothing throughout the whole performance about love, or even given the impression that love had anything to do with it; and that a performance was exactly what it had been, a display of almost mechanical skill, with no space in it anywhere for anything she might do or feel or wish to try and contribute.

  In the morning he was immensely cheerful, smiling at her over the cup of tea they had ordered.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Bennett,’ he said, ‘I hope you slept well.’

  And that was all he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Grace quickly, ‘I did. Thank you.’

  He leant over and kissed her. ‘Good. Me too. Pretty bedjacket, darling. Let me remove it.’

  And it began again, the same expert performance, the same lack of interest in her responses and needs. It was as if, she thought, she was a rather difficult car that he had to drive carefully, or perhaps, more appropriately, an untrained horse that needed skilful handling. She tried to concentrate on her own sensations, which were stirring and moving within her, and on the fact that she should simply be grateful for the skill and the care.

  And anyway, she thought, sinking into the great bath afterwards, looking down at her body which at least seemed to have a certain capacity for pleasure, however muted, it was early days. It would almost certainly get better, more personal, more tender. And it certainly seemed to please him.

  Throughout their fortnight’s honeymoon, the sun shone. They walked a lot, talked a little, ate a great deal, talked of the future; and every night Charles made love to her, expertly, confidently. By the time they went home she had experienced several orgasms. She could see she was extremely fortunate; at the same time, it was precisely that which troubled her. She wanted to give as well as receive, to be participant rather than passive, have her body asked what it wanted, not simply told. But Charles made it very plain that this was his territory and he was in control. He allowed no discussion, crushed any approaches; her body was his, to be handed over, without question, without comment, without request. There was no room in their bed for any approach, or indeed any rebuff, from her.

  She learnt more about him therefore in those two weeks than in the whole of the previous year.

  It had been the most wonderful summer. The sun shone, day after day, dispersing in some strange way the dark fears of war. Grace, generally contented, busy making the Mill House home, enjoying her garden, supposed she must be, knew she ought to be, happy, as she adjusted to married life in all its complexities: Charles’s innumerable food fads, spared her before (he was almost phobic about eggs, liked his vegetables overcooked and his meat underdone, and had to have Force with prunes for breakfast every day); his near-intolerable snoring, his reluctance to discuss his work with her, his clear assumption that she wouldn’t understand it, any more than she would understand the situation in Europe; Muriel’s habit of arriving without warning at the Mill House and expecting meals, drinks, attention; Charles’s insistence on their leading a rather fuller social life than she would have liked, certainly in those early days, when she felt so uncertain of herself and her capabilities, dinner parties, cocktail parties, people to stay; her own mother’s constant exclamations as to her great good fortune (especially her domestic help, a live-in cook, a housemaid and a gardener); and her enragingly coy questions about how Grace was enjoying it all, whether Charles was happy and, worst of all, whether she was feeling quite well – a veiled allusion, Grace knew, to the possibility that she might be pregnant.

  Carefully using her Dutch cap (which Charles had slightly irritably agreed was an advance on the contraceptives he used), she was sure she was not.

  And the procedure by which she might become so continued to disappoint her.

  Gasping, moaning, crying out with the vibrant, raw sound of triumphant orgasm, her body rippling slowly, reluctantly into a fitful peace, Florence turned her head, smiled tenderly at the face of her lover, beside h
er on the pillow, took his hand, kissed it, kissed the fingers one by one.

  ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘I love you so very much.’

  ‘I love you too. You’re the most perfect thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘Hardly perfect,’ said Florence, studying him, thinking how almost unbearably beautiful he was, her archetypal Englishman, with his blond hair, his hazel eyes, his suntanned skin, his wide, perfect smile. She was not in the least beautiful, not even particularly good-looking; she knew she wasn’t. She had grown up convinced she was plain, her mother had made constant allusions ever since Florence could remember to the unfortunateness of Charles getting the looks, the fair, blue-eyed looks; while she, Florence, with her dark hair, her almost sallow skin, her overlarge mouth, was the ugly sister. And she also, she knew, lacked Charles’s charm, his open easy manner, so like his father’s; she was shy, abrupt, slightly awkward even, much more like her mother. She often wondered why she didn’t hate Charles. But she didn’t, she loved him dearly.

  Giles smiled. ‘Well, you are. You’re perfect to me. Sexy and clever and lovely and absolutely perfect.’ He bent and kissed her flat, almost concave stomach, moved down, kissed her thighs, put his face into her pubic hair, kissed her there too. ‘You taste delicious. The taste of love.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Florence. ‘Oh God, what are we going to do?’

  ‘What are you going to do, Florence? It’s your decision. I’m here, I’m waiting, I’m ready for you. It’s easy for me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, it’s easy for you. Terribly easy for you.’

  She sat up suddenly, took his head in her hands, gazed intently into his eyes. ‘I keep thinking I can do it, that I’m brave enough, and then I look at him, and I know I’m not. It’s so hard to understand.’

  ‘I think I understand,’ he said, ‘I’m certainly trying to. But I love you so much, and I want to be with you, to have you with me—’