Other men had said ‘You are beautiful’. A few had said ‘I love you’. Benedict Swanfield said calmly, ‘My dear – everybody at High Meadows wants you. For a variety of reasons. I think you must think mine more natural and acceptable than some others.’
Just as calmly she nodded her head.
‘And I also think you are looking for a relationship without permanency.’
‘Yes. I think so too.’
‘Otherwise I would not have brought you here. I am not inclined to permanency in these matters – for obvious reasons …’
And meeting his eyes she smiled very quietly and nodded her calm, neat head.
The paperweight still lay in her hand and taking it from her he put it back on its table.
‘My possessions interest you, don’t they? Let me show you more.’
And taking her hand he pulled her to her feet slowly, gently, allowing her ample opportunity to resist him, waiting until her body had accustomed itself to the nearness of his before he put his mouth against her neck, the line of her jaw, the base of her throat, her ear, the lightest brushing of closed lips against her skin, the merest touch of a bee’s wing, soon over, although the vibrations of pleasure – and danger – lingered on.
‘The cameo vases are very rare,’ he said, as if he had not even touched her.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I tell you how many layers of glass it takes to produce them?’
‘Please do.’
‘Then look closely.’
But as she bent her head he slid a hand under her chin and kissed her on the mouth, parting her lips slightly and then releasing her before she had made up her mind whether or not – or how much – to surrender.
‘The peacock vase,’ he said, ‘is by Tiffany. You can see the evil eye in the tail – if you turn this way.’
And this time she was waiting to be kissed, a heady, reckless, enchanting little game leading to consequences it seemed wiser, as yet, not even to contemplate.
Yet there was no unseemly haste.
Picking up her glass she found it empty and accepted more brandy, sipping it slowly, knowing herself to be quite tipsy enough already, as he explained to her the sombre gold icons on either side of the door, the remarkably English water-colours decorating the walls of the passage beyond, each one leading step by step towards his bedroom door until she stood beside him contemplating the jade table screen by his bed.
‘Do you have black satin sheets, Benedict?’ She rather wished she had not said that, but without the least sign of surprise or offence or curiosity as to why she should think so, he drew back the covers to reveal crisp white linen, a scent of fresh lemons.
‘Do take off that heavy dress, Claire. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘No. It doesn’t.’
The room was not cold, Sit once again by coloured glass lamps and a brightly flickering fire, but she undressed quickly for this was the moment she had dreaded. Nudity, in theory, did not dismay her. Nor, when she had grown accustomed to a lover, did it seem other than utterly delightful in practice. But not even her years of hospital training, her even too thorough acquaintance with human anatomy, had enabled her to overcome her shyness of removing her clothes for the first time before a man who, until that ‘first time’ should be successfully over, remained a stranger. How wonderful, she had always thought – and more than ever now – to be transferred by some magic formula from the state of being fully dressed and flirting in an armchair to being naked and amorous in bed, some blessed act of metamorphosis which would spare her this awkward scrambling with buttons and belts and buckles, the embarrassment of looking or not looking as the jacket and shirt and trousers to which she had grown accustomed became the unclothed body of an unknown and physically excited man.
Four men before Benedict – no, five – had watched her perform this painful exercise and each one had spoken his version of ‘not so fast. Hey – let me do that’. Benedict said nothing, allowing her to bolt for cover beneath his immaculate, fragrant bed linen, and to hide there until he joined her. But now that they were both naked her shyness evaporated and she lay passive for a while beneath his exploring hands, her eyes closed, her mind closing, yielding utterly and mesmerized with the yielding, until her senses sprang to life again and she was attacked – she could think of no other words for it – by fierce shafts of her own desire, the accumulated need of two barren years offered now to Benedict.
She could not say ‘I’m ready. Take me and please be quick about it!’ Dorothy Lyall’s daughter could never have managed to say that. But she could and did press herself against him with all the urgency that was now in her, her fevered body telling him plainly that on this first occasion there was no need for finesse, no time for the techniques of practised sensuality, only for vigour and speed.
Her body erupted into orgasm the moment he entered it, a mighty upheaval that shocked her as, clinging to him, well nigh enduring the fierce joy he had brought her, she realized that while it thundered through her, renewing her, releasing her, it would scarcely have mattered whether or not she knew his name.
‘It has been rather a long time,’ she said weakly ten minutes or so later, feeling the need to excuse herself since women were not supposed to take pleasure as men took it, for the sake of the pleasure alone. At least she had never before done so and was uncomfortable now with the aftermath.
‘My dear – I do realize that.’
But he lay for a while with his back towards her, tense she thought, presumably dissatisfied, the familiar air of distance about him – the shadow – which he had discarded on entering this house enveloping him again. Obviously she had not pleased him. Very well. It was regrettable, and awkward, and she had not the slightest idea what to do about it. But, she was, after all, no tame, domesticated creature who lived only to please a man. Nothing obliged them to see each other again except on the most public of occasions, and she had coped with worse disasters than this. Yet she had never before made love without some acknowledged degree of affection, had never suffered, afterwards, the rebuke of silence, the insult of a hostile back. And although she could understand it and accept it and had not the least intention of making a fuss, it was, nevertheless, unfortunate. Disappointing? Embarrassing! Not easy to bear.
The answer was to get up, get dressed, make some cheerful remark and indicate her readiness to leave.
‘I suppose it must be late.’
‘No,’ he said, turning towards her, ‘Not yet.’
‘Oh well –!’
She sat up and, taking her by the shoulders, he slid her down again so that she was almost beneath him.
‘Not yet, Claire.’
‘I rather thought you wanted me to go.’
‘I know you did. I don’t. Wait a while.’ She waited, her head in the hollow of his shoulder, her body curving, fitting itself against his, adapting to him, so that when he entered her again, thoughtfully and slowly, taking time and care, exercising skill and imagination, her desire for him was wholesome, sound, no longer desperate, her vision of him accurate, her memory not of hunger slaked but of shared pleasure. And afterwards, when he retreated into his distance and managed, with some effort, to ease himself only a little away from her, she fell asleep with perfect content, waking a half an hour later, to find him fully composed.
‘Can you stay the night?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
He did not ask her why.
‘Ah well – I suppose that means I have to dress and drive –!’ But he was perfectly pleasant about it, courteous, amused, as he had been at the start, certainly not tender, no longer amorous, but – how could she phrase it? – as if that hidden quality, that something which she knew to be there, wanted to be there, whatever it turned out to be, had somehow risen a little nearer to the surface.
‘I’m glad,’ she said, ‘about the second time.’
‘Ah! Is that why you are allowing me to watch you slip into that delightful lingerie?’
‘Heavens – I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Oh yes you had.’
‘Well – that’s all right then.’
Yes. Perhaps it would be all right. She hoped so. Outside in the paved yard the wind was fierce and cold, threatening rain and the certain prospect – as she had already remarked once before – of winter coming on.
‘Are you coming all the way back here, Benedict – or to High Meadows?’
‘I really don’t know.’
She understood that he had not the least intention of telling her. Nor, when they reached Mannheim Crescent, did he seem at all disposed to linger.
‘Good night, Claire.’
‘Good night, Benedict.’
They had stood here before at her gate and spoken these same words on the night he had calmly admitted his knowledge of his wife’s promiscuity. Calm because he had not cared. Calm now. And why not? She did not expect him to care for her. She would be surprised, alarmed, possibly inconvenienced if he did.
‘Good night, Benedict.’
Yet, just the same, she was glad they had made love that second time. Perhaps, in fact very likely, they would never make love again. But she would remember that.
Chapter Ten
Standing in the kitchen the next morning, clattering the breakfast china Miriam had given her into the wholly unworthy lodging-house sink, she was painfully aware of Euan Ash, sitting at the wooden table behind her, ironic, far too knowing, sipping, with an air of spiritual sweetness, a mug of tea which even at this early morning hour he had laced – as one did in the trenches – with whisky.
‘Congratulations,’ he said.
‘On what?’
‘Well – I conclude from my observations that your life has been – entered, shall we say? – by a man.’
‘One could say that.’
‘So – congratulations. Can’t say I’m surprised but I might be sorry. Anyone I know?’
She shook her head.
‘Oh good.’ He gave her a seraphic smile, calmly pouring another tot of whisky into his tea. ‘I was rather afraid it might be Kit.’
‘No. Not Kit.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Kit is quite horribly tenacious, my darling – don’t you know. Hangs on like grim death to anything he decides to call his own.’
‘Euan!’ Slapping a Minton cup and saucer down hard on the chipped, wooden drainer, she swung round to face him. ‘Kit changes his girls like partners in the barn-dance and makes no bones about it. Everybody knows that.’
He shrugged and smiled again, the cruelly accurate light of the November morning giving him a very brittle look indeed beneath a thin shirt, a gaudy, inadequate pullover. ‘Ah yes. But that’s only one side of him, Claire. Maybe his best side and certainly his most natural, I agree, but he’s on the verge of something else just now. Haven’t you noticed it? I rather think he’s going to turn respectable.’
‘Oh – for Heaven’s sake, Euan, don’t be clever.’
‘Darling, one is what one is. I just use my trained eye, that’s all, and draw conclusions with my expensively educated mind. And if Kit isn’t heading for a bout of morality then I’ll be very much surprised. It was all right for Kit the butler and Kit the gallant major to be promiscuous, because butlers are expected to deflower all the maids – it’s a perk of the job – and we all know what soldiers are. But Kit the hotelier will have to mend his ways, or at least look as if he has, until he gets rich enough to please himself. Stands to reason. Only overbred aristocrats like me and those jolly chaps who drive dustcarts can afford to be open about their depravity. Middle-class gentlemen have to be very careful. And once he gets his hands on a nice middle-class young lady like you, then he may not let go. Not in time for me, I mean.’
‘Are you in such a great hurry, then?’
His smile, this time, was deliberately boyish and sweet.
‘Well yes – I’ve got to be on my way soon, you know. To Edinburgh – or somewhere near it.’
‘To see your friend?’
‘That’s right. Naturally you’ll miss me.’
‘Oh yes – naturally. I might even come with you.’
‘Good Lord – you did have a bad night then – didn’t you.’
She hardly knew what kind of a night it had been. Nor did she wish to think about it in too much detail. She would treat it, she decided, as a temporary imbalance of the mind, a direct result of that dreadful unveiling ceremony which he had forced upon her, manoeuvred her into attending. He had taken advantage of a vulnerable moment … No! To think such nonsense was to return to the philosophies of Dorothy and Miriam, the level of the dewy-eyed milkmaid seduced by the squire, and she would not sink to that. He had been perfectly honest. He had wanted sexual gratification. So had she. And it would, therefore, be unjust and slightly hysterical to blame him because she had turned out to be less sophisticated, less seasoned, than she had herself imagined. He had taken her at her face value. She must take him at his. And stop playing the innocent led astray when she was no such thing. There would be no awkwardness. He was far too experienced for that. When they met again he would behave as if nothing had happened. Nothing – of any real significance – had. And for one thing at least she was thankful. He had not insulted her by sending her flowers this morning, via a casual command to his secretary. ‘Oh, by the way Miss – whatever the woman’s name might be – get some flowers delivered to a Mrs Claire Swanfield this morning, will you? The usual thing.’ Or had he? She put on her hat and left the house at speed in case the offensive tribute should still arrive and ruin her entire day.
Kit Hardie was in the hotel lobby, having already completed his first ‘commanding officer’s inspection’of the morning, looking sound, handsome, blessedly familiar.
‘Ah – the light of my life,’ he said, kissing his fingertips in the gourmet’s gesture of appreciation as she hurried through the door, and then glancing at his watch, just to let her know that – light of his life or not – he had realized she was late.
But he was feeling cheerful this morning, experiencing a moment – rare with him – that was almost content. For the first time, that weekend every bedroom in the hotel had been occupied. All sixteen tables in the restaurant had been fully booked and could have been booked twice over on Saturday night. Sunday lunch – a recent innovation – had aroused more interest than expected. And had Mr Clarence not been standing there behind his reception desk, keenly observing, drawing swift and salacious conclusions, he would very likely have kissed Claire’s cheek – or perhaps just the corner of her mouth – and ruffled her hair. For, although he knew quite well that neither one of them was ready yet for the other, it did no harm to establish the habit of touch, no harm at all to let it be understood, in the hotel and elsewhere, that she was spoken for.
‘Good morning, Kit. You’re looking well.’
Wonderfully well, in fact. So very much the rock to lean on that she felt an undeniable temptation, on this uneasy morning, to lean. Yet, just the same, she had made him no promises. There could be no obligation. He had no right even to enquire how she conducted herself, much less to feel hurt by it. She repeated that, loud and clear and several times over in her mind, furious with the rush of altogether unnecessary guilt, which made her smile brighter, her manner rather wanner than anyone could be entitled to expect on a dreary November morning. Where had he spent the night for that matter, she wondered? Judging by his geniality and his air of well-fed content it seemed unlikely that he had slept alone. A mature, probably wealthy woman, she rather imagined, or, on the other hand, some scatter-brained little chorus-girl from the Princes Theatre, according to his humour or his opportunity. But, nevertheless – right or no right, promises or not – she was slightly uncomfortable with him for the rest of the day.
The weekend’s cherished guests departed, escorted tenderly to the door and then forgotten, their rooms cleaned and aired and refurbished for the ‘cherished guests’, w
hoever they might be, who would occupy them tomorrow. The weekend’s flowers were thrown out with the debris from the breakfast trays and replaced with the best Claire could find on a November Monday. Lunchtime was so quiet that Aristide Keller went home to preserve his artistic talents for evening, leaving Amandine to cater to the needs of Toby Hartwell and Nola’s cousin, Arnold Crozier, whose weekends at the Crown had a habit, sometimes, of extending to Wednesday. The two men lunched at their favourite tables in opposite corners of the dining room, Toby alone and rather wistfully, still suffering the aftermath of a weekend at High Meadows, Arnold Crozier with a girl, very young and very blonde as all his girls seemed to be, a ‘flapper’ with a short skirt, a cloche hat, a glazed expression, quietly sipping her champagne and fingering the new gold bracelet on her wrist while he, in his black beetle’s whisper, lectured her on the exact number of millimetres per day a white wine should be turned when left to mature in its bottle.
‘Creepy old man,’ said Polly Swanfield, appearing at Claire’s elbow as Mr Crozier, giving his young lady a final word of advice about the new season’s Beaujolais, climbed into his Rolls and was driven away. ‘He got me one night in the cocktail bar – you know how he sits lurking in his corner and then just pounces – Lord, what a scream – he just went on and on about some kind of a beetle that came over from America on a Californian vine, years and years ago, and ate up just about every vineyard in Europe. Isn’t that just the kind of thing you’d expect Arnold Crozier to know? As if I cared. What mattered to me was keeping a straight face because all I could think of was that this beetle – phylloxera or something I think he called it – must have been his brother. And since he is Nola’s cousin and owns half the hotel and half of Bradford and Leeds to go with it, I suppose mother wouldn’t like me to laugh at him. Anyway, Claire, how about giving me a cup of tea? I’ve been rummaging through Taylor & Timms all morning and I am dead.’
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