Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  There was another brief flicker of recollection. Grace and herself behind the screen in Pilgrim’s studio, peeling off their débutante dresses. But then the image swam away again and she was thirty-one years old, in Rafael Wolf’s apartment in a house in Wilmersdorf.

  Rafael put his hand up to touch her cheek, and then the swell of her breast. Looking down she saw that he had big hands, with broad tips to the fingers. They were working hands, not like Miles’s.

  ‘Come here with me,’ he said.

  The room was L-shaped, and in the toe of it there was a bed covered with a dark blanket. Rafael bent and pulled back the covers, and she lay down with her head propped on one arm to look at him. He took off his own clothes, unhurriedly and without a shadow of self-consciousness. He seemed so clean and natural that Clio thought she could catch the scent of the mountains off his skin, and she turned her head to glance at Grete’s paintings.

  Rafael sat down on the edge of the bed and put his big, warm hand on her belly, then slid it through the tongue of dark hair and between her legs.

  ‘You are very beautiful,’ he told her.

  ‘No. I’m ordinary, I’m …’

  His touch made her draw in her breath in the back of her throat. She forgot what she was saying and lifted one arm instead to draw him down beside her.

  They looked at one another. Rafael’s skin was white and clear and the hair on his body was dark gold, darker than on his head. It curled into points in his armpits, making Clio think of the barley-sugar twists she and Julius had bought as children out of big jars off the shelf of a sweetshop in North Parade.

  She felt suddenly hungry for him, as she had never dared to be with Miles, not after the very beginning. She dipped her head and nuzzled the curls of hair, breathing in the clean scent.

  He began to stroke her, making long smooth movements with his hands, over her ribs and into the hollow of her waist and then down over her flanks. His face was half in shadow, and then as he bent forward light from the single lamp licked over his cheeks and she saw his intent expression. He made small inarticulate sounds as he concentrated on her, as if she were some wild animal that needed to be calmed.

  Slowly the stroking became more focused. His fingers moved over the insides of her thighs and worked in the soft place between them. Clio gave a long sigh that was partly astonishment and partly an acknowledgement of her pleasure. Her knees fell apart, and Rafael moved to kneel between them, bending over her until his mouth touched her damp hair and his tongue probed and rubbed the sliver of scalding flesh against the hard bone underlying it.

  Clio’s arms stretched out and her fingers clawed as she lifted her hips to the pressure of him. She was too amazed to feel awkward, or exposed, or to wonder what she should do next.

  Miles had never done anything like this.

  On the rare occasions when he had wanted to touch her at all, Miles had preferred to make love to her from behind, with short jabbing movements that seemed expressive of frustration or even anger, and he had kneaded and pinched her backside until it hurt, and when he came he had yelled Christ, and then he had rolled over and apparently fallen instantly asleep. Sometimes, lying in the dark afterwards and listening to his breathing, Clio had touched herself where Rafael’s tongue was teasing her now.

  There was nothing wrong, she had told herself. She knew Dr Stopes’s theories and had read the earnest, wholesome manuals at the Clinic. But even in the darkness of her own bedroom her cheeks had begun to burn and her body had lost its dull tingle and begun to feel like cold meat, and she had withdrawn her hand and turned over to try to sleep. It was a continuing irony that she knew everything on paper and nothing in the reality of warm flesh and blood.

  ‘Rafael.’

  Clio clenched her fists and her fingernails made red half-moon weals in the palms of her hands.

  She was afraid that she would scream out loud, and she was even more afraid that this imperative goal would still elude her.

  ‘Rafael.’

  He lifted his head to look at her. She saw the glint of her own juices on his lips. Clio began to shudder, long shaking waves that came from inside her, from nowhere.

  Rafael’s blond head bent again. His tongue flicked delicately, and then he drew the point of flesh and the seaweed fronds into the warmth of his mouth and sucked on them.

  Without warning, a bolt of white light split Clio’s body. It ran through her as all the muscles in her body contracted into a single shivering knot and then burst in scalding ripples, and then knotted and burst again, over and over, spilling the light out of her, so that the light fell in showers of sparks, a thousand Guy Fawkes rockets contained in the extraordinary envelope of her own flesh, and then the sparks that were released drifted slowly, exquisitely downwards and away into powdery blackness.

  She never knew whether she screamed out or not.

  When she opened her eyes again Rafael was looking down at her, and she read the tenderness in his face like a blessing.

  ‘I never have …’ she began, but he put his fingers over her mouth. She wanted to lick the broad ends of them; to kiss each of the knuckles in turn.

  ‘This is now,’ he said. ‘Not before.’

  Clio sighed with happiness. Her limbs felt warm, and supple, as if they could reach and stretch any way she wanted. The lamplight made the room cosy, and turned the piles of books and papers into mysterious crooked towers. She lay in the crook of his arm, looking around her. It seemed odd to feel secure in this place she had never seen before, with a man she hardly knew, but that was what she did feel.

  After a little while she turned her attention back to Rafael. Sweat had darkened the curls of barley sugar on his chest so that they looked as if they had been licked into sugary spirals. She leant forward and rubbed her cheek against them.

  Even his penis looked different from Miles’s. Her husband’s had prodded bluntly out of the undulations of flesh beneath his belly. Rafael’s was longer, and it stood clear of the triangle of crisp golden hair at the base of his flat stomach. In her innocence Clio had imagined that all men looked like the diagrams in the Clinic’s manuals, or the same as Miles, a matter of grey and purple pouches and an angry red eye.

  But now that she looked at him, she saw that Rafael was beautiful.

  She lazily touched him with the tips of her fingers, and then closed her fingers around him.

  ‘Like this,’ he murmured, meaning to show her.

  The exhortations in the manuals danced in front of her again.

  ‘I know what to do,’ she told him firmly, and then surprised him with her laughter.

  Rafael lay back against the pillows, watching her. To Clio, he seemed to be offering himself up to her with an unaffected generosity that was the opposite of all Miles’s delicately wounding snubs and puzzling subterfuges.

  It was all quite simple, she suddenly understood.

  All the mystery required was for two people to be equal, and honest with each other, so that what one of them wanted gave the other pleasure to perform.

  In a matter of minutes, Rafael had taught her more about love-making than she had learnt from thousands of dutiful hours at Dr Stopes’s Clinic, and from the whole of her married life.

  Clio bent her head. Very carefully, she took him in her mouth. She traced the contours from the shaft to the head with the tip of her tongue, and she heard his sharp indrawn breath. The sound of it gave her as much satisfaction as her own startling climax had done.

  At length it was Rafael who slipped away from her. He turned her so that she lay on her back and he knelt between her legs again.

  ‘May I?’ he asked, with serious formality.

  The smile she gave him was luminous, hazy with tenderness. ‘Yes,’ Clio said.

  He came inside her, joining their bodies, but the communication was all in their eyes as Clio lifted her arms and drew him down to her. This was more familiar now, and the familiarity troubled her. She held him as tightly as she could, denying the chilly mem
ories of Miles and the sudden fear that came with them of what would happen tomorrow, and the day after, to Rafael and herself. She felt the thin shreds of her momentary security torn and whisked away by her own anxiety. For all the closeness of their bodies she was removed from him, even as he reared up over her and then blindly called out her name.

  Afterwards, he lay still with his eyes closed and his head against her heart.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Clio whispered. ‘Other things came crowding in. I didn’t want them to.’

  ‘It is all right,’ he told her. ‘You don’t have to give all of yourself at once. This is only the first time.’

  ‘What will happen?’ she asked, hearing herself like a plaintive child.

  Wait, don’t ask too much, don’t try to take too much.

  ‘When?’

  Humbly she said, ‘Tomorrow. The next day.’

  Rafael laughed at her, but she could hear that he understood her question. ‘We shall go to Julius’s concert, of course. To the Balalaika for some more drinks. I shall take you out to the Havel for some walking by the lakes. What else?’

  Clio was ashamed of her importunity. She lay more comfortably against him. ‘Grace will be going back to London in three days’ time.’

  ‘Do you want to go with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then stay here with me,’ Rafael said.

  His simple certainty dispelled her fear again.

  The Philharmonic Hall was almost full. Clio and Rafael took their seats with Grete and Grace, and as they settled themselves they saw that Pilgrim and Isolde were already in their places in the row in front. Pilgrim swung round with an extravagant wave and Isolde rolled her eyes and twitched her red lips into a kiss.

  Grace looked away and frowningly studied her programme. Julius would be playing a popular selection of Mozart and Richard Strauss. She was grateful to see that it was at least music that she could comprehend, even though it would not have been her own choice to spend her last evening in Berlin in a concert hall in close proximity to Pilgrim and Isolde, as well as to Clio and her rural Bolshevist friends.

  But she was here for Julius’s sake, Grace thought, because he had so evidently wanted her to come. There were not many things she could have refused him. The realization made her cheeks feel warm, and she straightened her back against the uncomfortable seat until the moment had passed.

  While she waited for Julius to appear on the platform she craned her neck, very discreetly, to see who was occupying the VIP seats at the front of the hall. She had heard a rumour that Goering would be in the audience, but she could see no sign of him.

  Clio was looking around her too. The audience was composed of the prosperous Berlin bourgeoisie. There were plenty of jewels on powdered bosoms, and tight waistcoats stretched over comfortable stomachs. There was also a preponderance of brown uniforms. She was conscious of Rafael beside her, a little unfamiliar in a dark suit, and of the pearl-grey silk folds of Grace’s skirt fanning over her own woollen one. Rafael shifted a little in his place, as if he was uncomfortable or apprehensive.

  The hum of conversation in the hall modulated suddenly into an expectant aria of coughing and whispering. Clio lifted her head. She saw the conductor emerge from the wings and bow to the surge of applause that swept up to greet him, and then turn to repeat the bow to his orchestra.

  The space at the centre of the platform was empty.

  She felt the pluck of empathetic stage fright that she always experienced before Julius’s performances. She knew that he would be waiting, out of sight behind the red plush drape of the curtain, with the music beating in his head.

  Then, to another burst of clapping, Julius came out on to the platform. He walked quickly to his place at centre front with his violin tucked under his arm and his bow swinging in one hand. His movements were so perfectly characteristic, and so familiar to her, that for a vertiginous instant Clio could have believed that they were not his but her own, and that she had passed from one body into the other, and now would have to play Mozart’s Concerto No. 4 in D major to an audience of hauts Berliners. Absurd fear gripped at her bowels, so that she turned to Rafael to try to smile it away. Only she saw that Rafael was staring at the stage, leaning forward as if to detect some sign that was both invisible and inaudible.

  Julius bowed his dark head. When he lifted his eyes again Grace thought he was scanning the rows of seats in search of her. His face was very white, as white as his starched collar and the butterfly wings of his tie. She found that she wanted to stand up, to signal to him I’m here with you, and she curled her fingers around the edge of her seat to anchor herself.

  Then he turned aside, so sharply that the black tails of his coat flipped behind him. There were the formal bows exchanged between soloist and conductor, soloist and the orchestra.

  The audience was silent now, fully expectant. Clio noticed only subliminally in the split second before Julius lifted his violin that there was none of the usual coughing and fidgeting before the music burst out.

  Julius began to play. At first he seemed tense but after a few bars his face cleared, and then settled into the expression of remote concentration that it always wore when he became absorbed in his music.

  Clio’s breath came more easily. She sank back by small degrees until her shoulder blades connected with the plush padding of her seat. Rafael eased his long legs into a more comfortable position in the cramped space. The music rose around them and up into the gilded vaults over their heads.

  The whistling was the more shocking just because Julius’s playing had taken hold of all of them.

  There was one long, sharp blast that cut across the sweetness of the music like an obscenity, and then three or four more that came and went and then united in a single harsh shriek.

  A collective gasp seemed to stir like a wind in the concert hall and then the old seats creaked and groaned as people turned to gape at the source of the noise. The whistling went on, raucous and defiant. Isolde leapt to her feet and shook her fist at the back of the hall, but neither Clio nor Grace looked round. Their eyes were fixed on Julius. At his back the conductor let his baton fall and the orchestra struggled on and then raggedly faltered into silence, section by section.

  Julius continued to play. The notes rose thinly, sliced into fragments by the whistles.

  ‘Julius,’ Grace whispered. She covered her mouth with her fingers.

  Isolde was shouting something while Pilgrim jerked at her arm. There were more shouts, and a banging of seats, and then the stamping began.

  Clio looked sideways at Rafael. He was hunched forward, with Grete’s hand on his. Slowly, moving her head as if her neck were painfully stiff, Clio turned to see what was happening behind her. All the time she could hear Julius’s unaccompanied playing and see the image of his death-pale face.

  A group of young SA men had occupied the last row of seats. They were standing up, as stiff as if they had been called to attention, and they were holding shiny silver whistles to their lips. The blasts were synchronized now into sharp, short volleys of noise, and the stamping and handclapping from the body of the hall fell into the same vicious rhythm.

  ‘Stop it,’ Isolde was tearfully screaming. ‘Damn you, stop it.’

  Grace bit into her own knuckles as the noise swelled up like the sea.

  A man’s full-throated voice roared out, ‘Jude! Jude!’

  Clio felt rather than heard Julius stop playing.

  She turned again to face forward and saw him lower his violin until it rested at his side. The conductor had already left the stage and the players in the orchestra sat in a silent phalanx, looking nowhere.

  Julius bowed again, with ironic grace, into the storm of his audience. Then he walked away, straight-backed, and disappeared into the wings.

  Clio caught at Rafael’s arm. The chorus had been taken up in other sections of the hall.

  ‘Jew! Jew!’

  ‘What can we do?’ she whispered.

  ‘W
e must get him away from here.’

  He was already pushing away from her, over the feet and knees of their neighbours, towards the end of the row and the aisle. Grete was ahead of him. Clio and Grace stumbled in their wake, clutching at their evening handbags and trailing wraps. ‘Excuse me,’ Clio heard Grace muttering as she trampled on the feet of Berlin matrons. Excuse me, as if they were making an unscheduled exit from a Shaftesbury Avenue matinée.

  They ran the length of the concert hall, past the young men in their brown uniforms, and out through the double doors into the foyer. A group of ushers was peering into the hall around an opposite set of doors. They seemed merely curious, rather than surprised or shocked by the disturbance. Rafael leapt down the shallow steps that led from the main doors into the street with Pilgrim at his shoulder.

  The performers’ entrance was in a side street overshadowed by the dark bulk of the hall. The door was open, and they saw Julius standing in a dingy entry. He was wearing his old black overcoat buttoned to his chin, and he held his violin in its case close against his chest, as if it were a child.

  ‘Come with us,’ Rafael ordered.

  Julius hesitated. ‘If they decide to restart the concert …’

  ‘Come now.’

  Clio had a vision of the brownshirts in the hall realizing that they had been deprived of their sport and spilling out into the street in search of their Jewish violinist. Heinrich’s story of Herr Keller the lawyer came back to her.

  ‘Please, Julius. There isn’t going to be any more music tonight. Do what Rafael says.’

  Still he did not move. He drew his violin case to him and looked back over his shoulder into the light, as if he could not believe they would not call for him again, that there had not been some administrative mistake that could all be explained away. He had played other concerts in Berlin; sometimes the posters bearing his name were defaced or there were the gaping spaces of empty seats in the prominent front rows, even catcalls when he took his bow, but he had never dreamt of being driven from the stage. Clio and the others saw that he was numb with shock.

  It was Grace who broke through to him. She seized the violin case in both hands and wrenched it away from him, and then she took hold of the lapels of his black coat and shook him until he looked down into her face. His expression changed at once. Grace wrapped her arms around him and leant her cheek against his shoulder.