Virgin's Holiday

by Halliday, Brett;

  Jules made one mistake. His consummate artistry was not calculated to meet the reactions of a virgin at twenty-nine. He knew nothing whatever of the repressed forces within Vergie. Nothing of the terrifying desire which racked her. His knowledge of psychology was limited to those who played the game of love as he played it.

  Vergie ceased to breathe as he withdrew his lips. She lay upon the sofa and waited for nothingness to engulf her.

  Then Jules was on his knees beside her. His lips caressed her eyes, her cheeks, found her lips as his fingers fumbled with the bow which bound the bodice of her gown.

  She responded instinctively with opened lips while her soul prayed his dalliance might cease. She gasped at the almost unbearable suspension, but Jules knew that Rome was not built in one day. His technique called for a rather unusual amount of preliminary agitation before he considered any woman properly attuned to go through love’s final ritual.

  Vergie writhed as he proceeded with his elaborate preparations. She had no idea what was going to happen. She had no knowledge of gauging the psychological processes involved.

  Jules had no accurate way of measuring the effect of his caresses would have upon Vergie. He did not know there were women who reached Vergie’s age without an introduction to romance, licit or illicit as the circumstances demanded.

  When she began to gasp out broken little cries, he felt the stage was set and desisted.

  He kissed her cheek tenderly. “I’ll be ready in a jiffy,” he murmured. “Come to me when you are ready.” He departed swiftly, leaving the bedroom door open. He paused in the doorway just long enough to throw her a kiss and his eyes danced with agonizing anticipation.

  Vergie lay huddled on the sofa for a little time. Then she sat up and looked about her. The front of her dress hung down, and her breasts had become flaccid. She caught up her dress and fastened it, then pushed her skirt down to cover her legs.

  She made the motions mechanically, as though the breath of life had departed from her. Then she leaned her forehead in her hands and tried to think coherently.

  What had happened? What terrible thing had happened? A moment ago everything had seemed worthwhile. With passion futilely spent, she felt humiliated and dirtied.

  She looked up in dismay as she heard a sound in the bedroom. The figure of a man passed by the door as she looked. A tall, ungainly figure. Thin-shanked and hollow-breasted in the revealing undress of a loosely clasped silk robe.

  Vergie shuddered and got up. He was waiting for her in there. Turning back the sheet. Waiting for her to come in to him like a common drab from the streets.

  She tiptoed to the door and opened it. Then she was in the corridor and fleeing toward the sanctuary of her own room. Down one flight of stairs, and mercifully behind a barred door.

  She dropped to a chair and wept. She felt shamed and disgraced. The noxious memory of Jules’ complacent nakedness confronted her.

  She ceased weeping and stood up to peer at herself in the mirror. Her clothing and hair were disarranged. Her cheeks flamed with rouge and with shame.

  She reached up and tore at the gown fiercely. The fabric was strong, but a devil of perversity had taken possession of Vergie. She felt better when she tossed the offending garment into the corner. The brassiere and scanties followed it. Then she hurried into the bathroom and scrubbed her face. After two merciless baths, she felt the taint had been removed. It was all a matter of instinct. Conscious reason had deserted her.

  Her introduction to sex had been so mercilessly drab!. A revulsion seized her and brought a longing for the Vergie Whidby she had been before embarking on this mad effort to transform herself to a role obviously unsuited to her nature. She despised sex, and wanted none of it, she told herself.

  The new clothing mocked at her. What a fool she had been! Everything she had worn this evening was consigned to the wastebasket. She packed the other things in the very bottom of the new trunk, putting the contents of her old bags on top.

  It was after midnight when she had finished. There was a train at nine o’clock which would take her on to St. Augustine. To the security of historical research and the self-effacement she had always known.

  She laid out the same travelling clothes she had worn from Random that morning, thankfully finding the dark glasses and putting them where she would not forget them.

  Then she slipped into the chaste coolness of a plain linen nightgown and knew peace once more. She refused to think of any of the amazing things that had happened to her. It was comparatively easy to thrust them back from conscious thought. They could not touch her now. They were so bizarre that they seemed the figments of an unhealthy imagination.

  In a sense she felt freed and quieted by her experience. For years she had dreamed of just such an adventure. For years she had been tantalized by a restless belief that she was missing the best part of life.

  This night had disillusioned her. It was a blessed relief to step back into the sturdy clothing of Vergie Whidby.

  Probably it was just as well, she reflected. She could go on now with no disturbing doubts. She welcomed approaching thirty and spinsterhood. The quiet future would soon obliterate this terrible night from her consciousness.

  After telling herself this a certain number of times, she fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  HOLDOUT

  “You don’t mind if I go out tonight, do you, mom?” Tuck stood poised in the doorway from the kitchen after she had finished the dinner dishes.

  “Where are you going?” Mrs. Tucker asked. She was comfortably settled in a rocking chair by the open window where the breezes swept in from St. Augustine inlet.

  “Just going out,” Tuck said. “Nip and Bill Porter are coming by to run out to Jazzmania for a little while.”

  “Bill Porter?”

  “Sure. You know. You met him the other night. He works for Mr. Nipperson. City editor … or something like that.”

  “Oh yes. That nice newspaper man. Who else is going?”

  “No one else, mom.”

  “I suppose it’ll be all right, for a little while,” Mrs. Tucker said. “I guess Mr. Porter’s old enough to look after you two youngsters. But don’t forget that I simply put my foot down on you going out with any of the younger boys until you’re a good deal older than you are now.”

  “I know, mom,” said Tuck. “You’ve told me often enough so I ought to know it.” She departed hastily to run up to her room and change before Nip and Bill came by for her.

  It certainly was the devil to be eighteen, she thought. She guessed eighteen was about the worst age a girl could be. Especially one with an old-fashioned mother like hers.

  She stripped off her clothes and took a hasty shower. Well, she hadn’t lied to her mother, she assured herself. She had an uneasy conviction that it was almost lying not to tell her about Lee Pennel, the orchestra leader at Jazzmania, but her mother hadn’t asked her.

  She dressed her young body in the briefest of undergarments, and slipped on a green voile dress which she believed made her look at least two years older. An automobile horn honked outside as she rubbed on some rouge and touched up her lips.

  She ran a comb through her short hair and ran downstairs.

  “Bye, mom,” she called as she passed out the front door.

  Bill and Nip were waiting for her in a red automobile of uncertain vintage. Bill had purchased it on the installment plan two days previously. He had just had his new job a week, and had been, of course, broke before he looked for one. Bill was like that. He was utterly unconvinced that a job was worth seeking while he still had money left in his pocket.

  Nip greeted Tuck, and moved as close to Bill as it was possible to squeeze, pretending to make room for Tuck on the front seat. None of them were deceived by the maneuver. Bill sat glumly at the wheel while Tuck settled herself. He was thirty-two, and he found the unabashed adoration of the eighteen-year-old daughter of his employer somewhat embarrassing.

  “Gee, you loo
k slick tonight,” Tuck told Nip as Bill started the car gently.

  “Umm. I feel slick,” Nip admitted. “That’s what love’s done to me.” She glanced boldly at Bill.

  “Love?” he scoffed. “Forget it, kid. Wait ten years before you start talking about what love does to you.”

  “Don’t try to discourage me,” said Nip. “You know I adore you, and I know you like it.”

  Bill groaned and did not reply. He drove along the winding road toward the roadhouse on the bank of the Matanzas River. He didn’t want to look at Nip because he knew she was disturbingly beautiful. Fluffy brown hair and an appealingly candid profile. Gloriously young and gloriously expectant.

  At the moment Bill was wondering just how long he would be able to hold his job down. He liked the job, and he admired Mr. Nipperson tremendously. That was the devil of it. He found himself suddenly wishing he could dislike his employer. Then he wouldn’t have any compunction about accepting what Nip offered so freely.

  But it was a question of his job or asceticism. So Bill set his jaw and tried not to listen to the chatter from the two girls.

  “Mom informed me again tonight that she wouldn’t think of letting me go out with any boys for two or three years yet.”

  “Aren’t mothers funny? They’d keep us in diapers forever if they had their way.”

  “Nip! You’ll shock Bill. Talking about diapers and such.”

  “Shucks. Bill won’t be shocked. He wore ’em once himself. Didn’t you, Bill?”

  “Yeh. But I’ve been out of them long enough to forget it. That’s more than you can say.”

  “Listen to him.” Nip laughed. “He’ll start lecturing again. Why don’t you get some goat glands, Bill, and perk up a bit?”

  “Never mind about me,” Bill said. “I’m not in my dotage yet. That’s why I’m not robbing the cradle, and I won’t start now.”

  “Is that so? Lee Pennell isn’t worrying about robbing the cradle with Tuck.”

  “Lee Pennel’s a louse,” Bill said. “And Tuck’s going to get her fingers burnt if she keeps on playing around with him.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Tuck assured him.

  “The trouble with you kids,” Bill exploded, “is that you don’t know what it’s all about. You’re willing to walk into any sort of situation with your eyes shut because you haven’t got sense enough to know the danger signs when you see them. You’ll learn some day that all men won’t spank you and put you to bed like I do. Then it’ll be too late.”

  “You must have been asleep the last ten years,” Nip said. “Give us a chance and we might teach you something.”

  “Oh, I know it’s considered smart to be casual about sex,” Bill grated. “But you cheapen it all so damnably. I’m not any little Lord Fauntleroy with silly illusions about chastity. Marriage hasn’t anything to do with what I’m talking about. But you’re refusing to look at facts just as much as your grandmothers did. What does an eighteen-year-old child know about picking out a man to cohabit with? You take a yellow light for a full-speed-ahead signal. You get sex all mixed up with romantic ideas, and believe all men are decent. They’re not. And orchestra leaders are generally the slimiest of the lot.” He glared at Tuck as he swung the automobile into the illuminated parking lot reserved for patrons of Jazzmania.

  “And we still demand to be shown,” Tuck told him as she and Nip got out of the car.

  Colored lights were strung about the trees outside, and the monotone of dance music swirled out the open windows. Bill went in with them glumly. He was broad-shouldered, heavily tanned by a tropical sun, clear eyes which regarded life with invincible optimism, possessing a great fund of humor, and a homely philosophy well-grounded on reality as he had observed it during fifteen years of roving existence as a newspaper man.

  The interior of Jazzmania was indistinguishable from the interior of a thousand jazz palaces located over the length and breadth of the land. Small tables surrounding a small dance floor. Dim lights overhead which were turned off at intervals while a revolving globe scintillated the colors of the rainbow. Wretched food upon the tables. A sufficiency of poorly mixed drinks at high prices. A swing orchestra to blare out the barbaric rhythms the youth of the land demands. Over it all a heavy pall of tobacco smoke which added to the general gloom.

  Bill sat at a table with Nip and Tuck, and looked about. He saw no one he knew, though the girls were calling greetings to friends all over the room.

  “Why did we come here?” Bill muttered as a sloppy waiter laid a menu before him.

  “To dance,” Nip told him. She pushed back her chair and stood before him with outstretched arms, weaving her hips in waltz time.

  “All right,” Bill grunted. “That’s about the most innocuous pastime we can enjoy here.” He got up unwillingly and took Nip in his arms. They swirled together to the dance floor where they gyrated uncomfortably amongst many couples.

  Nip laid her head upon Bill’s breast and sighed. The full length of her resilient young body was pressed against him as she unerringly followed his movements.

  A little tendril of her hair floated up to tickle Bill’s chin as he looked down upon her with dismay. A fragrance of youth and of passion floated up to him. He was strangely moved.

  A surge of desire swept over him, to be beaten back savagely. Bill was no celibate. Neither was he an utter scoundrel, he told himself. A protective tenderness was stronger than passion. She was so woefully young. Years too young to know what life really held for one who waited.

  Bill labored under no illusions concerning the proclivities of modern youth to seek the excitation of sin. But he was sternly resolved on a hands-off policy. He was old enough and sane enough to take the future into consideration when turning thumbs down upon the reckless present.

  So he danced with Nip, holding his head aloof and seeking to think of something to distract his mind from the tormenting softness of Nip’s breasts as she forced them against him.

  He stood silent while the others clapped for an encore, and was happy when the orchestra did not comply.

  Nip clung to his arm petulantly as he led her back to the table. “So you’re going to be like that tonight?” she asked disappointedly. “What’s the matter with me? Have I got B. O. or something?” Her voice was flippant, but tense.

  “I wish you had,” Bill said aloud. “Then I wouldn’t have such a damnable time remembering you haven’t reached the age of discretion.”

  “The age of discretion?” Nip gurgled. “Maybe not. But I’m past the age of consent. Tuck and I looked it up in one of the law books in Judge Rollins’ office.”

  Bill couldn’t think of any good reply to that. They were nearing the table by that time, and he uttered an angry growl when he saw the man sitting opposite Tuck.

  It was Lee Pennel. The orchestra leader who had deserted his baton for the more exciting enterprise of seducing Tuck. He was a sleek young man. Younger than Bill, with aged eyes. Fine black hair brushed back from a bulging forehead. Thin cheeks and sensual lips. He had brought his orchestra to Jazzmania for an extended engagement a few days previously, and had lost no time in selecting Tuck as the most luscious morsel of village virginity to be found in St. Augustine.

  Tuck was immensely flattered by his attentions. A few months ago she and Nip had decided they were tired of playing with boys whom they had known from childhood. Then Bill Porter had come along. And Lee Pennel.

  Lee stood up and smiled as Bill and Nip approached. “I’ve ordered a bottle,” he told them. “And I’m breaking in a new boy to lead the gang. Let’s throw a real celebration.”

  “I don’t feel much like celebrating,” Bill told him. He held Nip’s chair for her, then slid into his own.

  “That’s too bad.” Lee’s tone was guarded. He and Bill had met the night before, and he sensed the immediate antagonism between them.

  “Bill’s sore because I haven’t reached the age of discretion,” Nip told them.

  Lee laughed softly. �
��Get ’em while they’re young, and tell ’em nothing,” he said.

  Tuck laughed with him while Bill considered how pleasant a task it would be to wring the fool’s neck.

  “That’s just what I tried to tell him.” Nip had her vanity case out and was delicately rearranging her lips. “I told him he needn’t worry, that I’d reached the age of consent,” she went on.

  Lee chose to guffaw loudly at that. “You’re okay,” he said admiringly. “If they’re old enough they’re big enough, and if they’re big enough they’re old enough.” He uttered this aged saw with an air of the most profound wisdom, and glanced about the three faces for approbation.

  “Your lousy wit,” Bill told him, “is only exceeded by your poor taste.”

  “Oh, come now,” Lee said. “These little girls are old enough to know what it’s all about.”

  Nip and Tuck giggled while Bill lit a cigarette and looked away from Lee’s pasty face. He had a growing conviction that he would smash that face with his fist before the evening was ended.

  Then he grinned as he saw a familiar figure at a nearby table. “There’s Pete Crane!” he exclaimed. “Hi Pete!” he called above the blatant music.

  The waiter arrived at their table just then with a squat bottle, a pitcher of cracked ice, and ginger ale.

  Bill stood up to attract Pete’s attention. Nip stood up beside him and followed his gaze. “Pete looks sober tonight,” she said composedly. “Who’s the blonde with him?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Bill grunted. Pete saw him, and Bill made frantic motions for him to join the party of four.

  “She looks like a knockout,” Bill said enviously as Pete and his companion conferred together, then moved toward them carrying their glasses.

  “I know who she is,” Nip exclaimed. “That’s Blanche Nolan. At least she used to be Blanche Nolan. She’s been married and divorced twice since she was home last. But that’s Blanche all right.”