The Vanishing Princess

by Jenny Diski

  “You think the injustice to her is any less if we don’t mention her name?”

  “I don’t know about the injustice to her. That’s also for the two of you.”

  Richard privately thought this was a pretty thin way to deny her own responsibility. But Susan, for whatever motive, developed a rational view of her relationship with Jackie’s husband. What went on between them occurred, so far as she was concerned, in a vacuum which had nothing to do with his wife and family. Only if she intended or wanted to intervene, to break up their marriage, would she be participating in their family life. And she had no such intention, no such desire. She saw herself as harmless and neutral in relation to Jackie. When she and Richard met, it was during his working time, never when he might otherwise be at home, and she was clear that, astonishing and thrilling though their relationship was to both of them, it didn’t impinge on Richard’s marriage. She was providing an alternative sexuality, and Richard loved his family; these were two unconnected facts. He was not dissatisfied and looking for somewhere else to go. Jackie was family; Susan was fantasy. They were separate things. Therefore there was no cause for the guilt which, however much she tested for it, she did not feel.

  “Do you do what we do, with your wife?” she asked when he questioned her argument for practical innocence.

  “Never,” he told her, quite shocked at the idea. “It wouldn’t come up. I’m not unhappy with our sex life. It’s quiet but very good. I wouldn’t want it different.”

  Susan had no difficulty understanding this and it satisfied her own reasoning.

  The fact was, however, that betrayal of Jackie was very close to the centre of Richard’s and Susan’s activities together. For Richard, Susan knew quite consciously, his good marriage with Jackie had to be betrayed in order to remain good. Infidelity was essential as a balance to Richard’s loving-husband role, it was the culture in which their marriage survived, and she suspected that Jackie knew something of it, perhaps choosing to remain silent as her part of the good-marriage bargain. If Jackie was not betrayed, she would have had to take on the sinful Richard who was not a good husband and responsible father. Better for that Richard to remain outside the domestic sphere. Indeed, Susan sometimes felt, in relation to Jackie, that she was providing her with an essential service. Another woman might demand more of Richard than his sexual obsession. Richard and Jackie’s marriage was safe in Susan’s hands.

  But there was also an aspect of her affair which Susan did not so readily confront. There was Susan’s own separate and particular betrayal not just, obviously, of Tom, but, in truth, of Jackie as well. It was a betrayal which was not related to Richard’s agenda at all. Consciously and socially, Susan had no wish to bring Jackie into her affair; but half-consciously and sexually, Richard’s wife was fully, if subtextually (as her English tutor would say), present. There was a frisson she rarely chose to define, but which was ever-present in her passion during her love-making with Richard, written and performed. It was Susan’s thrill at her awareness of The Wife’s ignorance of what her husband was up to at that moment—at this very moment—with her. Often the image of Jackie (just glimpsed at the Christmas party), working away in her white coat on some pampered body, or in her car, driving the child to school, would surface, while Richard was expressing excruciated pleasure at what Susan was doing to him with her hands or tongue. Her own orgasms were enhanced by the fleeting glimpse of an oblivious Jackie peeling the potatoes for supper.

  Eventually, Susan could no longer suppress her knowledge of how much Jackie’s ignorance and betrayal added to her excitement. She admitted to herself that her enhanced pleasure at the deceit of her affair made her, by any standards, not a nice person, but she found herself surprised (and perhaps a little relieved) rather than distressed at this discovery of her true nature.

  She never voiced anything of this to Richard, but again it was not because she felt ashamed. On the contrary, her silence provided a double gratification: not only the original deceit against The Wife, but also the dishonesty of her dialogue on Jackie’s rights with Richard, which amounted to a secret betrayal of her lover as well as Jackie. She cherished the silent lies that lived only in her heart. She suspected it was the same for Richard, though she had no wish to share her insight with him. She did not believe that he got no pleasure from the fact of his infidelity to Jackie. His protestations that he loved his wife differently though deeply and therefore was not betraying her were the same lies that she told and created for him, she supposed; the same private multiple pleasure in deceit that she experienced. And then, of course, there was her own husband. The spare bedroom in their house, with its made-up bed, might have been designed for an illicit afternoon affair, but Susan always led Richard to the bed she and Tom slept in every night to fuck him.

  With everyone who was not her deceived and ignorant of her unfaithfulness to them, Susan had created a secret and secluded pool of pleasure to dip into which was for no one but herself. It felt necessary to her, as if some essential part of her was strengthened—fed and nurtured into solidity—by her solipsistic knowledge. It was not that she wanted anyone’s pain, not at all, only that she wanted to enjoy the benefits of a sequestered Elysium that was hers alone, and which added no actual suffering to anyone’s life, as far as she could see.

  She did not transform this into a moral somersault and consider herself ethically justified. She understood quite clearly the moral position which declared that people were injured just by being betrayed; that broken trust was betrayal whether it was exposed or not. Innocent parties did not have to participate in the infidelity by their knowledge of it to be the victims of it.

  But she was not taking a moral position. She did not feel the moral position to be the slightest burden on her conscience. Mrs. Donahoe, suburban housewife and mother, contributor to the profits of Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, Parent Governor of Sidcup Junior School, practising owner of the Delia Smith wipe clean cookery cards, found herself to be a woman without the faintest remnants of a conscience, and she was considerably surprised. Try as she might, she could find no guilt, towards anybody, about her behaviour. She required no forgiveness, for she had not the faintest sense that there was anything to forgive. Unconsciously, surely? Well, how would she know? She slept well enough and lived through her days without the slightest difficulty. The situation pleased her in its entirety. She had no hankerings to sabotage it by confessing anything to anyone, or leaving clues as to her guilt. She was meticulous about changing the sheets, airing the bedroom, and showering the scent of Richard off her body before the children and Tom returned to the house. There were no accidental Freudian absent-mindednesses that put her affair at risk. All the parts of her life seemed to be working fine.

  “Big case next month in Lewes. I think I’m going to have to stay there for a week or so.”

  Susan looked up from her book, this time, giving her husband her full attention.

  “When?”

  “Second week, definitely, and possibly into the third. Will you manage all right?”

  “Of course I will,” she told him. “Anyway, I owe you some time from the summer school.”

  “I don’t think about it like that,” Tom said, feeling hurt.

  “Oh, no, of course you don’t. I didn’t mean it like that. Really, it’s all right. It’s not even school holidays.”

  It had been a while since Tom spent time away from home on business, but every now and then a case came up which he felt was important enough to need to be there throughout.

  “I was thinking,” Tom added, with a smile that wrinkled the corners of his eyes, “when I get back, why don’t we take the kids to my mother, and spend the weekend in the country? A nice break. Treat for us both.”

  Susan looked pleased. She was pleased.

  “That’s a lovely idea. Book it up. Somewhere quiet with very good food, darling.”

  She could tell they would be making love tonight. This pleased her, too.

  The
following day Richard arrived at twelve o’clock. After they had lain sweating in each other’s exhausted embrace for a while, Susan spoke.

  “Tom’s going away for a week next month.”

  “Oh? But you’ll have the kids won’t you?”

  Susan detected slight alarm in his voice. Did he think she was going to ask for a whole night together? Or more?

  “Do you remember what you said in one of your letters, about wishing you had the marks on you we can’t make because it would be indiscreet?”

  He looked at her half-sexual, half-anxious.

  “Jackie isn’t going away.”

  “I want what you want. Remember how our dreams fit on top of each other. A bruise or two, or marks on my wrists from a tight knot . . . they’d be gone by the time Tom came back.”

  Richard’s anxiety flew away.

  “Whore,” he whispered in delight.

  “Your whore. I’ve got a selection of scarves you can use.”

  “What are they made of ?” Richard’s voice was curiously husky.

  “What difference does it make what they’re made of ?” Susan laughed.

  “Silk chiffon is best, though a slightly rough, silky viscose does nicely, too.”

  Susan rested on her elbow and stared, amused and excited, into her lover’s face.

  “Tell me.”

  “I use scarves sometimes on my own.”

  “Your wife’s scarves? To do what?”

  “My scarves. I keep a small collection in my room at college. When I’m alone I use them to masturbate.”

  “Tell me,” Susan insisted.

  “I’ve never told anyone about it before.”

  “Tell me! Tell me!”

  “There’s a way of tying them, it’s incredibly—exciting . . .” He was a little abashed. Not certain what reaction he would get.

  “Details. I want details, please.”

  “Well, I tie one side around my waist, and then hook the remainder hanging down the back—it’s got to be a long scarf—between my buttocks . . . and then you spread it out over your balls and cock.”

  “Your balls and cock.”

  “You’re very strict. My cock and balls—which I stroke, very slowly, through the material—God, you’ve got no idea how it feels—and, as an extra treat, while I’m stroking, I hold the loose end with my other hand . . .”

  Susan jumped out of bed and began rummaging about in her closet.

  “It’s no good, I’ve got no visual imagination. Does the colour matter? Show me.”

  She whisked out a couple of long silk chiffon scarves and threw them across to Richard where they settled on him like fairy clocks blown by the wind.

  “You aren’t bothered by my confession, then?”

  “No, I’m thrilled. Richard, you must tell me everything. Every detail of your desires. I’m going to take all your secrets.”

  He took a scarf and knelt on the bed, tying it around himself as he had described. He was as efficient and practised as a man doing up his tie. All the while, Susan lay along the foot of the bed and kept her eyes unblinkingly on his activity. He watched her watching him doing what no one had ever witnessed before. When he was ready, he lay back on the bed and began to stroke himself. Susan kept her eyes fixed on him while she took the second scarf and, wrapping it around her waist, draped it between her parted legs. She ran her fingers softly over the fabric.

  “Here, let me tie it properly for you.”

  Richard stopped and tied her scarf around her so that she had a similar tension between her buttocks and could manipulate the loose end with her free hand to increase the pressure.

  “Oh, Richard,” Susan whispered, and while working gently on herself, reached out to do for him what he was doing himself.

  “Is that good? Is that how you like it?”

  He reached out to her, and they worked on each other until Richard moved towards her.

  “Keep the scarves between us,” Susan whispered as she opened her legs to receive him, and they made love between two layers of chiffon, chaffing sweetly and pulling against the tenderest places on their bodies and into climaxes quite beyond anything they had ever known before.

  “I wish I could keep the smell of us on them,” Susan said when they’d finished, gathering up the scarves for washing. “When Tom’s away, we’ll have to use something else to tie me to the bed, so we can get them in this state again and I won’t have to wash them. I can sleep with them on my pillow for a week, my love, my lover, my whore.”

  Richard lay astonished at his good fortune in finding the mirror of his dreams. He wanted to hold her tightly and tell her he loved her, which was true, though only in a way specific to her. He was almost sure she would understand, but she had gone into the bathroom and was running the shower for the washing of the scarves and their bodies back to respectability.

  “And you,” Richard said, soaping her in the shower. “I want your secrets. All of them.”

  “Of course you do. They’re yours. My plans for when Tom’s away: they’re much more detailed. I’ll write to you about them—with details and exact instructions as to how you are to be my master. And you’ll follow them to the letter, won’t you?”

  “Of course, I’m your slave,” he said, and bent to bite her breast, but gently enough not to show any marks.

  “I love you,” she said, taking his wet head between her hands and pulling him close against her breasts.

  He knew exactly what she meant.

  “Nice meal,” said Tom, scraping up the last of the raspberry coulis.

  “Delicious. And we’ve got a whole day and night to go.”

  “Breakfast in bed, tomorrow.”

  “Late breakfast in bed,” Susan hummed.

  “Mmm,” Tom agreed. “Mustn’t miss lunch, though.”

  “We might,” she said, with a smile.

  “Yes, we might,” her husband agreed, wiping his mouth and pushing back his chair. “Come on, time for bed, old thing. Not feeling too sleepy, I hope?”

  Susan shook her head, dreamy with good food and wine. She knew exactly what he meant.

  Strictempo

  Dancing in the dark

  Till the tune ends

  We’re dancing in the dark

  And it soon ends

  We’re waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here

  Time hurries by; we’re here

  Then we’re gone . . .

  Hannah slid around the polished floor in the arms of her partner, trying to follow as smoothly as he led. Her arm ached because Terry was much taller than her, and it meant that her right hand was held in his at a very awkward angle. She hoped she was doing the right steps. She had learned to do the quickstep—side, side, step behind—at ballroom dancing classes at school, but once rock ’n’ roll impinged on her consciousness she’d given up, so she never learned to foxtrot. But Terry had medals, bronze, silver and gold, for ballroom dancing, and he used his body to signal to Hannah what she should do next, gently pushing her ahead of him. As long as she didn’t try to think about it, she made the right moves, or enough of them to allow Terry to manoeuvre her around the floor without either of them looking too foolish.

  Of course, she felt foolish anyway. What fourteen-year-old in 1962 would not flush as pink as her layered net petticoat with embarrassment at doing ballroom dancing in public? Luckily, there was no one of her own age to see her. She was humiliated only in her own eyes.

  Dances happened once a week, on Friday nights. The rug on the dayroom floor was rolled away to reveal polished wood that was perfect for dancing. The chairs and low tables were already ranged around the edges of the room. Danny was in charge of the record player. Reading from the record sleeves, he would announce the next dance.

  “Right, it’s a samba. Let’s make this a Ladies’ Excuse Me. Of course we’ll excuse you, ladies, we know you can’t help it.”

  Danny was very outgoing, which made him a natural choice for master of ceremonies. Not that anyone had c
hosen him; he just took charge of social activities, and no one else wanted to do it.

  The music was mostly provided by three LPs called Sinatra Sings Strictempo, Volumes 1 to 3, which were special dance tempo arrangements of Frank’s best-known songs. Once or twice during the Social, Danny would announce, “Right, now, specially for the wild teenagers in this establishment, it’s . . . the Twist!”

  He tried to sound enthusiastic, but his heart wasn’t really in it. Danny was only in his early thirties, but he liked a decent tune, with a proper rhythm, and a singer who could sing. Hannah was the only teenager in the hospital but, in fact, almost everybody danced to the Chubby Checker records she had asked her father to send. Everybody, that is, who danced at all. But even the patients who sat in their chairs all evening seemed to enjoy watching the energetic gyrations of the more active inmates, and were to be seen tapping their feet.

  Nonetheless, it was with something like relief that Danny announced, “Right-oh, Pop-pickers, that’s your lot. Back to good ol’ Frank.”

  It was in the hospital that Hannah discovered she could dance. Not the ballroom stuff, which was a matter of getting the steps right, but the Twist. She hadn’t mixed much with people of her own age for some time, so she didn’t normally go to dances. Even when she was at school, she didn’t dance. She wasn’t popular, and didn’t have a boyfriend, so during the dances she stood with a few other loners against the wall because only girls with boyfriends were asked to dance. Then she’d stopped bothering to go, telling herself that dancing, like sport, was for idiots.

  But having contributed Chubby Checker and her two Elvis singles to the hospital record collection, she was committed to dancing to them, and lo and behold, it turned out she did the Twist like a dream, and, with Terry, who was older, she jived everyone off the floor. The first time, everyone stopped dancing and stood in a circle around her, clapping and cheering her on, as if she were in a film. It surprised Hannah to find that she could dance, but there was no doubt that she had a natural sense of rhythm, and moved with a freedom that she didn’t possess in normal circumstances. Secretly, from then on, she looked forward to the Friday Social. She liked being able to do something physical with ease, and she discovered she also liked being watched. She knew she danced all the better for having an admiring audience.