A few minutes after I had given up trying to contact my friends the room telephone rang, but with a cracked, intermittent bell sound. It made me wonder if something on the line had short-circuited. I picked up the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me next door. Bella Reeth. I’m sorry to trouble you.’
I said nothing, wondering indeed what to say.
After a few more moments she said, ‘My hairdrier isn’t working. The plug doesn’t fit. Do you have an adapter, or another drier I could use?’
‘Yes,’ I said straight away. ‘I can take a plug off something in here.’
‘Shall I come to your room, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t be inconvenient?’
‘No. I’ll unlock the door for you now.’
So she came, appearing at my door with her damp hair wrapped up in a towel. She had her electric drier in one hand. She was wearing a calf-length silken robe, one that was tied at the front by a belt made of the same fabric, but which had no buttons. It was thin and white, hardly concealing her body. She clasped the front of it together between her breasts with her free hand. Her nipples beneath the flimsy fabric were visibly erect.
She numbed me with surprise. Tentative fantasies about what might follow from meeting such an attractive young woman had been flickering distantly all evening, but I had not expected her to come to my room on what seemed like a pretext. The hesitant, awkward relationship we had had until that moment was overtaken by the implications. It was late in the evening, she was wearing hardly any clothes, we were practically strangers. I invited her in, asked her to close the door. I had moved the hotel easy chair close to the bed as soon as I had put down the phone, and now I indicated she should sit on it. The seat was low, making her knees rise above her lap as she sat down. She kept them pressed close together. I searched around for my penknife, and for something from which I could borrow a plug. I used the bedside light, bent my head over it while I undid the little screws holding the wires in place.
While I did this she removed the towel from her head and shook out her hair, letting it fall in damp ringlets around her face. A delicate fragrance of shampoo or soap wafted towards me.
‘I have to dry my hair straight away after washing,’ she said. ‘It goes frizzy unless I do.’
I was fumbling with the plug, trying to hurry, trying not to show my nervousness. My head was close to one of her knees, where it poked out nakedly through the opening at the front of her robe. I was so close I could see the fuzz of tiny soft hairs growing on her calf. A thought was circling repetitively: I had not sought or created the situation, it was she who was making herself available by coming to my room like this, I was not to blame, I was free to respond, but I did not want it to happen, although I had not sought it, I found her so tempting, but surely I was not to blame, which gave me freedom to respond, but—
She was leaning forward while she waited. I could not look up at her, so conscious was I of her presence, her radiant cleanliness from the shower, her young body, her casually revealing robe.
The plug came off the end of the lamp’s flex.
‘Give me the drier,’ I said, looking up at her long enough to hold out my hand to take the appliance. There was still the existing plug to remove, then the other to put in its place. My hands could remain busy a while longer.
I could feel her watching me as I bent over the simple task.
‘Do you think we’re the only guests in the hotel?’ she said.
‘We haven’t seen anyone else, have we?’
The closed bar, the silent lounge. We had been alone at dinner, with lights on around our table, but the rest of the large room had been in darkness. The attentive waiter had swept in and out of our circle of light, responsive and polite.
‘I looked in the register this morning, when I arrived,’ Bella said. ‘No one else has checked into the hotel for more than a week.’
Her foot was resting beside my leg as I knelt on the carpet to change the plugs. When I had to twist around to reach for one of the bits I allowed my leg to move over slightly and press down on her naked foot. She did not move away.
‘It must be the quiet season,’ I said, making the last connection.
‘I tried room service just now, to see about the plug. No one answered.’
‘Maybe we really are alone in the building, then,’ I said. ‘The staff have gone home for the night.’
‘That’s what I was thinking. We could do anything we liked.’
‘Yes, we could,’ I said, not looking at her. I screwed the back on the plug and passed the drier up to her. ‘That’s fixed it,’ I said.
She shook her head again, ran a hand through her still-damp hair. I was surprised how long it was, now she had released it from the severe bun.
She reached down past where I was kneeling and slipped the plug into the wall socket. As the hot air began to whine, she played the flow across her hair, teasing it out with a comb she had taken from her large loose pocket. I was still on the floor at her feet. I watched the way the thin material of her wrap stressed and pressed against her nipples as she moved her arms.
She was awakening feelings in me that had been dormant for years, feelings I had repeatedly suppressed. I yearned to have her. With her hair loose she looked so young! As she dried her hair she was looking directly down at me, with her head cocked on one side. She combed out several strands, holding them away from her head in the hot stream of air, and as the hair dried it fell in a light cascade about her shoulders.
‘Why don’t you wear your hair like that during the day? You look better with it loose.’
‘Would you like me to?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Regulations. The collar must be seen.’
‘Tomorrow we’ll be going across to the island. No one from the Seigniory will be there, or even on the boat.’
She gasped in mock outrage. ‘Are you trying to get me into trouble?’
I pressed my leg harder on her foot. Still there, still touching.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘You know.’
‘I’ll still be on duty,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t risk it.’
That, I felt, was the unambiguous admission of her feelings that I had been waiting for. Risk what? Risk being seen with me, with her hair down? Risk stirring up my emotions to the point where I could no longer control them? No, she said. No, she was saying, she couldn’t risk it, not that, nor anything else.
Her hair was dry. After touching it quickly with her fingers, then combing it through a few times, she switched off the drier. The room was suddenly silent.
‘Are you on duty now?’ I said. ‘I mean at this moment.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Obviously you’re not,’ I said, feeling dull for having asked the question. But it had reflected the confusion she had created all evening: the conflict between the uniform of the constabulary, the sexually available young woman.
‘Right.’
‘So risk doesn’t come into it at the moment.’
‘Everything’s a risk. Isn’t it?’
She bent forward again to unplug the drier. For an instant as she leaned over, the top of her robe fell loosely open and I glimpsed most of the soft mound of her breast. It was probably an accident – she hadn’t meant that to happen. As she sat up again she pulled the wrap together across her chest, holding it primly against her with her hand. But she was regarding me with an open, unguarded expression.
‘What next?’ I said.
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘Are you going to ask me to stay?’
The words seemed to echo around me. I turned away from her, not wanting to put what I was feeling into words that I would have to hear myself say. I stared back at her, hardly breathing. She stood up, and the flex of the hairdrier dangled by her legs. I was beside her. The bed was next to both of us.
I said nothing.
‘Well?�
� she prompted. ‘It’s what you’d like, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said in the end, lamely, inadequately. In reality I did know. I wanted to thrust her forcefully back across the top of the bed, slip my hands under that silken wrap, cover her face and shoulders with kisses, smother her with the weight of my body on hers …
‘We’ve only just met,’ she said. ‘I’m too young for you, you have someone else waiting at home, you’re not ready for an affair, you’re scared of what it might lead to. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s not. None of those. I’m just not sure.’
‘I thought perhaps you’d like me to stay.’
‘I feel a terrible compulsion to explain,’ I said. ‘But you wouldn’t want that. It’s not your fault.’
‘I made a mistake, I guess.’ She tried to express a laugh, but it sounded insincere. I realized I was embarrassing her, and it was all without good reason.
‘No, I’m not ready. I can’t say why. I think I’m nervous. The trip and everything.’
‘All right.’ She held up the drier. ‘Thanks for this. We can change back the plug later.’
She went quickly from the room, her robe swirling around her legs. She closed the door quietly behind her. I went to it, pressed my ear against the crack. I heard her moving outside in the corridor, heard her key go into her door, heard the door open and close. Then silence.
I knew that I should follow her now. Call her back now. Explain now. Knock on her door now. Don’t let any more time slip by. Tomorrow she will be back on duty, her hair tied up again. The chance was vanishing even as I stood there, listening.
The silence endured. I made no move to follow her.
At last, when I could bear to, I went to the mirror in the tiny bathroom and stood looking at myself for a long time. I pulled at the loose skin around my eyes, smoothing the tiredness there, making the wrinkles temporarily vanish. But doing so pulled down my eyelids, gave red rims to my eyes, made me look worse.
I undressed and went to bed. I woke at intervals through the night, straining to hear some sound of Bella, urging her mentally to come back to my room.
It would have to be that way: she must come back to me. It could not be the other way round, because if she were to reject me the way I had just rejected her I wouldn’t have been able to bear it.
It made me reflect on what her feelings about me must be, after what I had done. It was arrogant to assume she might return to me during that night, but if she had done so it would have resolved an uncertainty. Through everything that had happened in those brief minutes – the nearness of her, the banal and evasive conversation, the little glimpses of her young body – I had been attracted to her more powerfully than I had been attracted to any woman in years. I wanted her with a passion that made me turn restlessly and tensely in the unfamiliar hotel bed, tormented by frustration.
Even so, deep down I was terrified she would return. The struggle between sexual attraction and sexual repulsion had dogged my life. Ever since Seri.
The ticking clock by Alvie’s bed and the wind gusting against the window in its loose frame – these were the only sounds in the pauses between conversations. I sat by the draughty window, looking down into the gardens and watching a black-robed priest tending one of the flowerbeds with a weeding tool. Why did they bother to grow flowers in such an inhospitable place? The lawns and the beds of the seminary’s grounds were incongruous on Seevl, an island within an island, constantly watered and fertilized and prodded. When we went to visit in the winter months only the lawns survived but today there were clusters of tough-looking flowers, the sort you found in mountain passes, gripping the paltry earth with shallow roots. If I craned my neck I could see the huge vegetable garden where the theological students sometimes worked. On the other side of the grounds, invisible from my position at Alvie’s window, was a small livestock farm. I knew that the seminary was not self-sufficient in food, because it was part of my uncle’s job to organize the supplies from one of the south-coast harbours, a day’s drive away across the mountains.
The priest at the flowerbed had glanced up at me when I first sat by the window, but since then he had ignored me. How long would it be before he, or one of the others, came to visit Alvie in her sickroom?
I looked across to the rising ground beyond the seminary walls. The skyline was a long, straight crag, with slopes of scree beneath it. Below the scree was the rank wild grass of the lower moors. There was a dead tower out there, a short way from the seminary, but it was one of the less conspicuous ones on Seevl, standing not against the sky but against the duller background of the crag.
My parents had started to discuss me. Lenden was getting ready for exams, Lenden had not been studying properly, Lenden was not doing well. I sometimes wished I had the sort of parents who boasted about their child, but mine apparently believed that humiliating me in front of other people would goad me to greater efforts. I loathed them for it, of course. I glanced at Seri, who was sitting by herself at a table in the corner of the room, apparently reading a book. Naturally she was listening while pretending not to. When she saw me turn in her direction she looked back with a blank stare. No support there.
After the humiliation came the ordeal.
‘Come here, Lenden,’ said Aunt Alvie.
‘What for?’
‘Go to your aunt, Lenden,’ said my father.
Reluctantly I left my seat by the window and went to stand beside the head of the bed. She stretched out a palsied hand and took mine. Her fingers were smooth and weak.
‘You must work harder,’ she said. ‘For the sake of your future. For me. You want me to get well, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, although I didn’t see the connection. I was acutely aware of my parents watching me, of Seri’s feigned indifference.
‘When I was your age I won every prize at school,’ Aunt Alvie said. ‘It wasn’t as much fun as being lazy, but in the end I was glad I’d tried. I know what it’s like to have to be lazy now, lying here all day. You do understand, don’t you?’ I understood all too well. She wanted my future to be like her present. She wanted to inflict her illness on me. I shrank away from her but the soft pressure on my hand increased. ‘Now kiss me,’ she said.
I was constantly having to kiss Alvie: when we arrived, before and after every meal, as we departed … and at special occasions, like this. It was part of the dread these visits held for me. I leaned forward, presenting my cheek to her cyanotic lips, but I was reluctant and delayed a little too long. She pulled my hand towards her. As her lips touched coldly against my cheek I felt her pressing my hand against her breast – her coarse wool cardigan, the thin nightdress, the surprisingly soft flesh below. I was at that age when other people’s bodies are matters of endless curiosity. I was astounded by the feel of her breast.
I turned my face, quickly kissed her cold white cheek, then tried to move away. She was still clasping my hand against her soft chest.
‘Promise me you’ll try harder from now on,’ Alvie said.
‘I promise.’
I tugged my hand away. Released at last I stumbled back from the bed and returned to my chair by the window. My face was hot with the indignity of the interview but I could still feel the ghost of the flaccid breast in my hand.
I stared out of the window, waiting for them to find another subject to discuss. But they would not leave me.
‘Why don’t you go out for a walk, Lenden?’
I said nothing.
‘Seraphina, do you think Lenden would like to see your den?’
‘I’m reading,’ Seri said in a voice that tried to convey pre-occupation.
Uncle Torm came into the room then, carrying a tray with cups and glasses. He put it down on the table where Seri was reading, covering her book.
‘Take your cousin for a walk, Seri,’ he said brusquely.
We were clearly being dispatched – something adult was about to be discussed. I should n
ot have minded hearing whatever it was.
Seri and I looked at each other with expressions of resignation. We were at least at one on something. She led me out of the room, down the gloomy and damp-smelling corridor and out of the house. The wind immediately gusted around us. We crossed the small garden attached to Uncle Torm’s house and emerged through a gate in a brick wall into the main grounds of the seminary.
Here Seri hesitated. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Do you really have a den?’ I said.
‘No. That’s what they call it.’
‘What is it then?’
‘My hideout.’
‘Can I see it?’ I sometimes climbed a tree in the garden at home to be by myself but I had never had a proper hideout. ‘Is it secret?’
‘Not now. But I don’t let anyone in I don’t want there.’
We walked along a gravel path edging one of the lawns. From an open window there came the sound of voices chanting a psalm. I walked with my feet scuffing up the gravel to try to drown the sound, because it reminded me of school.
We came to one of the wings of the seminary building. Seri led me towards some railings beside the base of the main wall, behind which were some narrow stone steps leading down to a basement. A priest, hoeing a flowerbed, paused in his work to watch us.
Seri ignored him and went down the steps. At the bottom she crouched down on her hands and knees and crawled through a low, dark hatchway. When she was inside she turned around and stuck out her head to look back at me. I was still waiting at the top of the steps.
‘Come down here, Lenden. I’ll show you something.’
The Dream Archipelago Page 11
