by Rosie Thomas
Inside the house she peered around, her eyes slowly acclimatising themselves to the light. She saw polished floors and Persian rugs, portraits and serious furniture and porcelain. Mattie laughed delightedly.
‘What’s funny?’ Mitch asked, half offended.
‘I imagined a Holiday Inn.’
‘What? This is an English country house. Like I read about when I was a kid. Okay, it’s only a small one. But the real thing.’
That was it, Mattie thought. It was like Ladyhill. She felt happy and secure enough in Mitch Howorth’s company for the irony only to add to her amusement.
‘Is it yours?’
He was too good-natured to take further offence at her incredulity. ‘No. Of course not. I rented it, a few days ago. I was staying in digs before, not very gracious ones. Fine for me, but I couldn’t have taken someone like you back there.’
‘Wait a minute …’ Mattie countered. ‘You said … You said that you were afraid I’d be too busy and glamorous to have time to see you again. How come you felt confident enough of me to rent a whole manor house?’
Mitch crossed the little space of polished floor that had opened between them. He put his hands on either side of her face, turning it to his. Mattie looked steadily back at him. His eyes were surprisingly clear, close to, the eyes of a much younger man. Quietly Mitch said, ‘Everything that can be arranged, should be. I never leave manageable details to chance. But I never confuse what I can make happen with what I can only hope for. It’s an important distinction in business, as well as in affairs of the heart.’ He rented a whole manor house, Mattie thought, on the chance that he would need somewhere to bring me. If he was going to bring me anywhere, he wanted it to be the place he dreamed of when he was small. His own Ladyhill, his fantasy possession, to which to bring an illusionist. The aptness as well as the grandeur of the gesture touched a deep chord inside her. It made tears prickle behind her eyes.
She knew that she shouldn’t ask, but the words came out just the same. ‘Am I an affair of the heart?’
‘Oh yes, Mattie. Body and soul as well, if you want. Only if you want.’
‘I do want.’
He kissed her, then, a very gentle kiss. She put her arms around him, awkwardly. When he lifted his head, to look at her again, Mitch said, ‘The owners have gone away to the South of France. For the whole winter. Isn’t that thoughtful of them?’
‘Supremely thoughtful.’
He kissed her again, but then pulled back once more.
‘The car is mine. I don’t want to confuse you.’ He was laughing at her.
Mattie groaned. ‘I don’t give a damn about houses or cars. I don’t care if you went to a gents’ outfitters and hired your suit and your sober tie and your clean white shirt. I don’t even care if your glasses belong to the theatre props department. Just so long as it’s you inside them. You are real, Mitch, aren’t you? You won’t vanish in a puff of smoke?’
He didn’t laugh any more. He took hold of her, almost roughly now, and bent her back against him.
‘Come to bed,’ he ordered her.
After that, Mattie didn’t see the panelled walls or the reproving portraits. They stumbled up the stairs together, and in a dim room with a four-poster bed hung round with dark red curtains Mitch undressed her, and then took off his own clothes. He was unabashed, gentle and inquisitive and unhurried. When he held her against him she felt that his solidity was hard muscle, not fat. She ran her hands over his shoulders and his hips, and put her mouth against the thick, curling grey hair that covered his chest. Mitch’s naturalness made her natural too. He didn’t appear to feel that it was necessary to be overcome with passion, or to hurry her on before she was ready. Mattie didn’t wish that she was thinner, or had a suntan, or try to pull in the rounded swell of her stomach. Mitch knelt down and kissed it, and then gently parted her thighs with his hands. Mitch seemed to expect that she would explore him in the same way. Mattie had never, ever since the times with Ted Banner that she had hidden away inside herself and forgotten, ever felt that it was comfortable to look at a man who was aroused by her.
Even with Alexander, she had closed her eyes or looked away.
With Mitch, inexplicably but clearly, it was different. She knelt down in her turn and took hold of him. She drew back the skin and touched the rosy head that was revealed, lifting itself towards her.
It seemed quite simple, as natural as it was for her to feel his arms around her, his mouth against hers.
Mitch lifted her up and laid her on the bed. Very slowly, but allowing no interruption, he began to work on her toes. He kissed them, and flexed the joints, and then traced the arch of each foot with his tongue. His lips closed over her ankle bones, gently sucking, and then his fingers locked around each ankle, measuring it, pinioning it. He moved to her shins and her calves, meticulously exploring the white skin, and then buried his face in the warmth of the hollows behind her knees.
‘Mitch,’ she begged him. ‘Stop. I can’t bear it.’ She felt awkward that he should be so patient, convinced that no part of her was worth such undivided attention.
‘Don’t interrupt,’ he reproved her.
She lay back and followed the loops and folds of the bed curtains with her eyes. Mitch’s fingers, surprisingly light, made feathery strokes over her thighs and her hips. He knelt over her and kissed her belly again, and then spanned her waist with his hands.
‘You have beautiful skin,’ he told her. ‘It feels soft enough to melt away altogether.’
‘I’m perfectly solid,’ she smiled at him. She locked her arms around his neck and drew him closer, so that she could reach his mouth. Mitch had taken his glasses off, and folded them tidily on the carved chest beside the bed. Without them, his eyes had the vulnerable, faintly puzzled softness of short sight.
‘Wait,’ he ordered. ‘I’m not ready yet.’
Mattie lay back again. Mitch wasn’t vulnerable, not in that way, at least. He was too sure of what he wanted.
He turned his attention to her breasts. He weighted his hands with them, then brushed the nipples with his fingers, watching them harden. He put his mouth to them and gently sucked, then turned his face against the white, abundant flesh.
‘They’re too big,’ Mattie whispered, putting her forearm across them.
‘No,’ Mitch gravely contradicted her. ‘If there is the slightest flaw, it’s that they are not quite big enough.’ He removed her arm, and went to work with his mouth again.
Mattie closed her eyes. She sighed, faintly, with pleasure and she felt his mouth curve in a smile of satisfaction.
He lifted her hands and kissed each of her fingers, circled his tongue in the crook of her arm and buried his face in her armpits. He stroked her shoulders and her throat, and kissed the thin skin under the angle of her jaw. And then he turned her over to continue his painstaking journey, from the nape of her neck and down the length of her spine.
Mattie felt warm, and dreamy, but at the same time every inch of her skin tingled, and burned, and she felt the tiny pull of the muscles and the rush of blood in her feet, and the tips of her fingers, as well as in the aching centre of herself.
When he reached the small of her back, Mattie moaned.
Unhurriedly, Mitch turned her over again. He parted her legs and knelt between them, looking down at her. Their eyes travelled over the other’s face.
And then, of her own accord because she wanted him, Mattie reached up for him. She lifted her hips to meet him, guiding him into her.
For the first time in her life, she wasn’t afraid of the size of a man. For the first time in her life she didn’t close her eyes, hoping out of fear, or affection, or boredom, that it would be all right, and quickly over. Her eyes stayed open, fastened on Mitch’s. Her mouth searched for his, and found it.
As soon as he came inside her, Mattie knew that she would come. And as soon as she knew it, it began. It was nothing like the hasty, bruising, brief burst of externally centred pleasure that
was all she had ever known. This was inexorable, spreading from a fierce bud that swelled inside her, but very slowly, exquisitely slowly, as they moved together. She whispered his name, then called it aloud. Her fingers clutched at him, then loosened and fell open. Mattie was lost, and it was a joy to be lost, within herself, apart even from Mitch. The bud grew, and became a dark red flower, full blown, and the petals fell back. The wonderful shock waves that it released raced all through Mattie to the tips of the fingers and toes that Mitch had caressed, in a hundred thousand shimmering and refracting ripples. She cried out, a sound she didn’t recognise that came from deep in her throat, and the cry died away into a long, shuddering sob.
It was only then that Mitch let himself respond. Mattie held on to him, rocking him in her arms and rejoicing in his pleasure, because it was part of her triumph in her own. To be absolved from the necessity to pretend, or to joke, or to cajole, was a revelation of lightness.
They lay still, half enclosed by the red curtain, holding on to each other. Mattie felt so happy that tears swam into her eyes and she let them roll down her cheeks. ‘I hardly ever come,’ she whispered. ‘And never like that.’
Lazily, watching her with satisfaction, Mitch propped himself on one elbow. He rubbed the tears away with his thumb and then tasted the salt of them.
‘Why not?’ he asked softly.
Mattie sighed and settled her head against his shoulder. The hair on his chest tickled her cheek. The rest of the world seemed comfortably remote, suitably irrelevant to their curtained enclave. She felt blissfully safe, and secure, and pleased with the two of them. ‘I’d better tell you,’ she said reluctantly, ‘in case you don’t want to go any further.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. But you’d better tell me, anyway.’
She began at the beginning. She told him what she had never told anyone else, except for Julia, about Ted Banner and his sad, shameful advances, and her own guilt, and the way she had locked all that away.
Mitch’s face went dark. ‘Jesus Christ. My poor love.’
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I was a tough kid.’ It was easy to see it like that, with the luxury of Mitch’s sympathy on her side. More confidently, she told him about John Douglas, and Jimmy Proffitt, and the men who had come after that. Mitch listened, without interrupting her.
‘I never liked it,’ Mattie whispered. ‘Perhaps I didn’t want to let myself like it.’
‘I’m no psychologist,’ Mitch answered, ‘but it’s possible.’ Mattie told him about her long affair with Chris Fredericks. He nodded patiently. Last of all, she came to Alexander. It was only then, when she talked about Alexander, and Ladyhill and Lily and Julia, that Mitch showed any flicker of jealousy.
‘Where is Alexander now?’
‘At Ladyhill, I think.’
‘Will you see him again?’
Mattie studied his face, then she shook her head. ‘No. Not like that. How could I? Alexander is a friend. I should have had the sense, for both of us, to keep it that way.’
Mitch nodded, satisfied. Then he put his arms around her, holding her against him. ‘Is that all?’
Suddenly Mattie laughed. ‘Yes. Not very much, is it?’ The sense of lightness came back to her. She could have floated off the big bed, except for Mitch’s arms holding her down. She felt his mouth against her ear. ‘Enough to be going on with.’ He was laughing too, she heard it in his voice.
Mitch reached out and turned off the lights. He folded himself against her back, tucking his knees into the crook of hers. ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘Everything’s going to be all right. You’re safe now. Go to sleep, my love.’
For so long, Mattie thought, she had been waiting for someone to say that to her. It seemed so simple, and so obvious, now that Mitch Howorth had finally done it. Obediently, Mattie closed her eyes and went to sleep.
In the morning, with thin autumn sunlight flooding the room, she turned to him again. She had woken up with the old, disbelieving cynicism dulling her happiness, but she reached out to Mitch with it. She touched him, smoothing her hands over his belly and the rounded muscles of his chest and arms, with the beginnings of familiarity. He blinked at her sleepily, and then lifted her on top of him. Mattie crouched over him, like a frog, and her hair fell around them, a more intimate curtain.
He made her come again. The easiness of it, and the reverberating depths of the pleasure it gave her, startled Mattie into silence. Afterwards she lay curled up in the warmth under the covers, incubating her happiness.
Mitch touched her cheek, then climbed out of bed and put on his dressing gown. He walked over to the window and stood with his back to her, his hands in his pockets, looking down into the garden. He stood without moving for such a long time that Mattie began to be afraid. She imagined that he was going to turn round and tell her something terrible, that he had to go away, and that after all it wasn’t any good, that she wasn’t safe after all. She scrambled out of bed and went to him, greedily putting her arms around him, knowing that if he said it she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
In the garden beneath she saw yellow leaves, and russet ones, shining with the night’s rain and bare branches poking up between them.
Mitch said, ‘Mattie, will you marry me?’
She listened to the words, inside her head, before she understood them. And then she felt a shock of relief and joy and certainty that was far stronger even than the physical pleasure that he had given her.
‘Yes,’ Mattie answered.
Mitch lifted her up and carried her back to the shelter of the absurd four-poster bed.
Mattie and Mitch were married at the beginning of December, a little over a month after they had first met. They were married at St Pancras register office, just round the corner from Mattie’s Bloomsbury flat, on a Monday, the only day on which Mattie didn’t have to be back at the theatre the same evening.
‘We want to do it very quietly,’ Mattie said firmly. But she relented in the face of Lily’s disappointment and made her the bridesmaid. Lily wore an ankle-length pink empire-line dress with puffed sleeves, and sheltered under a white fur shoulder cape, which she was delighted with. The bride wore a black maxi-coat with puffs of black fur at the collar and cuffs. It was not unlike the one that John Douglas had paid for to keep her warm through her first winter on tour. Mattie’s amazing hair rippled out from under a gold crochet pudding-basin hat. She looked like Ophelia, but she carried no flowers. Only Lily had a posy, of daisies and carnations in a pink frill to match her dress.
Mitch Howorth, blinking with pride behind his glasses, wore a double-breasted dark blue suit with a rose in the buttonhole. Julia had had to work hard to contain her astonishment when Mattie introduced him. He seemed so unremarkable, a small balding man with a slight paunch and an amiable smile. But there was no question that Mattie was in love with him, and he with her. On their wedding day they seemed to see no one else. Their eyes were fixed on each other, greedily, as if they couldn’t wait to be alone again. To Julia the obvious intensity of their passion seemed too naked, almost indecent. She shivered a little, beyond the impervious circle of their intimacy.
There was only a handful of other guests at the brief ceremony. Mattie’s brothers and sisters came, and Felix, looking very dark and spare in morning dress. Mitch’s only supporter was his younger brother, a fisherman from Whitby, who was his best man. But afterwards, when they all shuffled outside again led by Mattie and Mitch with their hands glued together, they were confronted by a knot of press photographers waiting on the pavement. The news had leaked out, despite Mattie’s insistence on secrecy. Flash bulbs went off, their incandescence making the December light seem even greyer when it descended again.
Mattie half hid behind Mitch. She was thoroughly relieved to discover that the photographers were there as much for Ricky as for herself. In the last years, Ricky had achieved some fame as the lead guitarist of The Dandelions. He had appeared at Mattie’s wedding in trumpet-legged white trousers an
d a ruffle-fronted overshirt, his forehead and cheekbones painted with flowers. He waved the photographers away and cheerfully fended off the reporters’ questions.
‘Nah, I’m just giving my sister away, aren’t I? It’s her day. You’ve got your pics, haven’t you? Now off you go.’
Mitch and a giggling Mattie were bundled into Mitch’s surprisingly elegant car, and the rest of the wedding party into the line-up behind it. They drove away to lunch in a nearby Italian restaurant, a favourite of Mattie’s.
Julia had wanted to give the party at her house.
The two of them had come together again, almost as friends. Neither of them had spoken of Ladyhill, or of Alexander. With an effort, Julia had made herself happy for Mattie’s happiness, and put the memories behind her.
‘Please let me,’ she begged Mattie. ‘I’d love to do it.’
‘It’ll be too much work for you,’ Mattie said.
Julia stared at her. ‘How could it be too much trouble? It’s your wedding.’
Gently, but allowing no possibility of contradiction, Mattie said, ‘I’d rather just go to the restaurant, without any fuss. You see, it’s being married to Mitch that’s important, not all the ballyhoo of a wedding.’
Julia was hurt, and her sense of exclusion deepened, but she knew there was no point in renewing her offer.
A few more people had been invited to the lunch party. They were mostly theatrical friends of Mattie’s, but Julia was relieved to see one or two familiar faces from the world that she and Mattie had once inhabited together.
Alexander had been asked, but he had telephoned to say that he was sorry, he had to be in New York. Julia thought that it was cowardly of him, but she could hardly talk to Mattie about his failure to appear. Neither of them mentioned Alexander, or Ladyhill, in the brief conversations that Mattie had time for before her wedding.
