The door was closed, and even so she thought he might be standing right outside. Watching, through the wood.
Her only sureness was that he wasn’t quite in here, in this little room. In here there was only her and Michael. So long as neither of them looked beyond, so long as they could keep this privacy, so long . . .
So long and no longer, but for now, well.
She leaned forward and kissed him.
It was what you did, how things began. Always with a kiss.
Kissing Michael was curiously like kissing a book, she thought. A book in a country-house library, perhaps, a hand-sewn binding with high ridged seams. Those lips of his were like much-handled calfskin, butter soft and warm but not responsive.
She didn’t know how much that was ignorance and how much it was nerves, how much the stiffness of artifice. Hand-sewn lips would never be as flexible as nature’s own. She wasn’t sure if their skin too had come from his underarms, or some other part of his body; she half thought she was still on duty here, testing Colonel Treadgold’s handiwork. She hoped not to test it to destruction, sprung stitches and leaking seams.
Or she hoped not this either, but perhaps she was doing Aesculapius’ work instead, or Major Black’s. Cutting him loose, letting him go. Giving him this last gift, the one thing that he wanted. This once behind him, what more could there be, what could she find to keep him, to give him cause to stay?
Well. All that was for afterwards. Whatever the repercussions, whatever the consequences, she was committed now.
She slipped her tongue between those unyielding lips – rubber, she thought, underlying the leather; how had the colonel made them, and with what? – and teased his teeth apart, found his own tongue lurking. Shy and wet and strange, not Peter, not tasting right. No matter. She should follow her own advice, perhaps. Your future’s up to you.
He wouldn’t relax, of course not. It would be foolish to expect that, a young man stretched like wire, so very ready to snap. Still. He was obedient to her hands, not resistant, if not quite yet ready to cooperate. Starting to believe it, perhaps.
She had to undress him, he didn’t seem able to manage on his own account. Perhaps he always needed help, what with that awkward hand, but tonight it was more than that. She thought he hardly dared to move, for fear that she would change her mind or shriek with horror or vanish like a djinn. Or that he’d wake up, as simple as that. Any number of ways, a young man could lose his dream from right there in his arms; he was breathless with fear, robbed of purpose, anticipating them all.
Well. She’d undressed men enough. She dealt efficiently with his clothes, all of them, you won’t keep your socks on, young man, not in my bed; but hold still, let me, I can see that you can’t manage . . .
It was her own clothes that seemed to give her foolish trouble. This was . . . not part of the job, no. She did the one thing, or she did the other; she put men to bed or she put herself. Not both together, not any more, no, never again.
And yet here she was, and here was Michael, still not Peter. Very far from Peter. It would be idiotic to lock the door and drape the mirror to keep Peter out. He couldn’t be further away already. No, all she had to do was keep this very young man here. In this world, this life. This body. Here, now . . .
She fumbled the buttons and tore the cuff, but her blouse was gone at last. The skirt was easier, its own weight letting it drop away. Shoes could be kicked off, no need to fuss with laces.
Her underthings demanded fuss, but – oh, you boy! – Michael was predictably fascinated. Did he not have sisters? He might have said; she might have guessed; she couldn’t remember. It was hard to remember everything, anything, in the dizzy strangeness of the moment. She was trying to be practical, competent, an experienced woman helping a youth through a difficulty; but – oh, she had difficulties of her own, and no one to help her through them.
This was . . . not easy, no. It felt artificial, like his lips: a deceptive layer of alien skin laid over something utterly man-made.
Still, though, there was nothing artificial about his body. She was glad she hadn’t turned the light off. He had something to look at, something to learn: the intricacies of women’s intimate wear, girdle and stocking tops and suspenders. She could look at him. All dispassion spent, she didn’t need to see him as a patient now. Indeed, she needed not to. There had to be a better reason. She could be his salvation, perhaps, but not his nurse.
And he, he to her – he could be what? A youth to train, a means to pleasure. Something that was neither patient nor husband. A body lovely to her eyes despite the scarring, despite all his hurts; eager to her touch despite his nervousness and doubts.
Come, then. There were doors to open here, for both of them. No harm in the world.
EIGHT
The second time, she thought the doors were at their backs, and closed behind them. She thought they were moving on.
She hadn’t really expected that there would be a second time. Certainly she hadn’t intended it, that night or later or ever again. If she’d thought about it at all, if she’d been made to stop and think, she would have said that this was a treatment she could offer, a knowledge she could share. Either one of those, or both together. Once would do. She thought.
She would have thought, if she had stopped to think. If she’d thought she needed to.
After that first time, she held him until he stopped trembling; and then he was all good manners and gratitude, expressed in clumsy whispers. She thought he wanted to go now, to relive this extraordinary night in the privacy of his own head, his own bed, where he might hope to understand it; only that he didn’t quite know how to leave. How to say goodnight, in such intimate circumstances.
How to let go, when you were tangled skin on skin.
She could have helped him, of course. It would have been another useful lesson for a boy, how to leave a woman’s bed with grace and tact. How to leave her happy.
But just when she thought they were both ready for it, there were crisp heels in the corridor and a soft tap on her door.
Ruth held her breath and his too, her palm laid lightly over his mouth. If they were caught, it would be the making of him and the ruin of her. She wasn’t – quite – prepared to sacrifice herself that way, to boost his reputation or his ego.
Suddenly she was shivery in a whole new way, cold and tense and not at all delightful. She hadn’t felt this way since her schooldays, when she’d been out of bed and making mischief – nothing like this! – and on the edge of getting caught. There always used to be a pleasure in the risk of it, but not tonight. She supposed she was just too old now to be so perverse, or else things mattered now in ways they couldn’t matter to a child.
The tap came again, and this time a low voice calling through the panels of the door: ‘Ruth? Are you awake?’
Not pitched loud enough to wake her, unless she were an absurdly light sleeper. Still, pitched loud enough to hear and to recognize. Nurses learn these tricks.
Judith. Her new friend, her near neighbour. Her victim, coming up to bed after a desperate evening, full of that weary energy that wants nothing more than a brew and a conversation before sleep; finding herself cocoa-less, without even the makings of a nightcap.
Without companionship, that too, unless she had another friend elsewhere on the corridor. Ruth tightened her hand over Michael’s lips.
Just for a moment there, she had taken the touch of them for granted. It was strange how quickly that could happen, when an hour ago all his body had felt wrong to her, wrongly sized and wrongly trained, not Peter.
A little moment longer, and blessedly Judith didn’t open the door to peer in, to check. Matron would have done that, absolutely. Judith was more sisterly. She clipped back to her own room.
Reassured, Ruth turned her head to find Michael’s eyes glittering at her in the moonlight, to feel his tongue teasing at her palm. Tickling.
‘You’re enjoying this!’ She was almost enraged, hissing at him, did
n’t he understand . . .?
No, of course he didn’t. He was a boy, new-made man; he was almost laughing. She snatched her hand away and he murmured, ‘I suppose there must be other nurses on this corridor?’
Indeed there were. These were the women’s quarters, set aside. The men probably called it the harem between themselves, or the seraglio. Forbidden temptations. There weren’t many of them, not enough: and all senior staff, like Matron and Judith and herself. The local girls arrived in flocks on bicycles and departed the same way, presumably trusted not to talk at home; but most of the nursing, most of the cleaning and cooking was done by orderlies, drafted men who were subject to military discipline and billeted somewhere in the house, somewhere else.
She grunted non-committally. He stretched himself slowly beside her, almost lasciviously against her, relishing all the length of her, head to head and toe to toe in her narrow bed; and said, ‘Not safe to leave, then. Not after all that fuss below, they’ll be coming and going all night.’
He wanted desperately to be right, she realized. Not to have to leave after all. That little moment of near discovery had changed something in him, or between them. Perhaps he too felt his schooldays resurgent, the thrill of near discovery, the kick of relief.
She wanted him to be wrong, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t leave now. Not for a while yet.
He said, ‘Could we, you know . . . do it again?’
And she had somehow not expected that, which was stupid. She should have felt it in him; she could feel it now. He had no arts of disguise, no thought of tempering his desire to the moment.
She sighed, perhaps, a little, and never thought of saying no. So long as they were here, held here and like this, it would be ridiculous.
Instead, sternly, she said, ‘Can you be very quiet?’
‘As a mouse,’ he promised, on a breath. And rolled himself over to lie above her, taking his weight on his one good elbow; and she did briefly think you’ll have to learn other ways than this, my lad. Have you no imagination?
No, of course he hadn’t. Or he had, rather, he had too much, but he’d need to be taught to use it. And not by her. She was resolved on that. This was treatment, like physiotherapy. One session, one night to make it possible. After this, he was on his own. She was not, was not going to be his doxy.
His or anyone’s. No.
There wasn’t much she could do in the way of training or advice, when they had to strive for silence: except in subtle ways, trying to let him know what felt good and what did not. She was surprised how quick he was to pick up on those cues. Less self-involved than she’d expected, now he was past the first raw shock of it. More interested in her. Her pleasure, her satisfaction.
One-handed and mismouthed, sweating breathless and biting his own strange lip when he must otherwise have cried out, inexperienced and distracted and awkward in more ways than one, still he managed to bring her somewhere she had not thought to go, through a door she thought locked and lost and forgotten; and, oh, Michael . . .
And so there was a second time, and then he was asleep. Cradled like a boy in her arms, his head on her shoulder, his maltreated face quite hidden and all his hurts fallen away, for this little time. She could feel not proud but pleased at her own wise remedy, a way to bring him sleep without dreams and without drugs, a way to soothe away his night fears and his needs.
Something woke him, none the less. Before she thought he should have woken, before he was ready for the day or she for him. Another kind of need, or just desire, stirring in his sleeping body. Stirred by her, perhaps. A shift in her, or just the smell of her, the fact of her, the presence. Speaking to something in him below the level of his conscious mind, an awareness, physical, animal . . .
He stirred and woke, swift and silent, all predator. And looked at her, at her wakefulness. And his hand on her back was all male, enquiring, demanding. Animal.
No words this time: only her own body saying yes, shifting to accommodate. Her leg sliding over his, her hips lifting, sidling, settling.
His eyes, stretching in wonder at finding her on top.
Oh, you – you boy. Had you never even thought . . .?
Apparently, he hadn’t. Apparently he was delighted to discover something else that was new, when he thought already that he knew it all.
She did like this boy, she couldn’t help it. He had all the gloss and artifice of his class and breeding, but underneath that he was still delightful, in ways that couldn’t be so readily manufactured. And he was biddable and complaisant, even when he wanted to take charge; and extraordinarily willing to share beneath all that superficial ego and selfishness, and . . .
And so there was a third time; and still no sleep after that because now he wasn’t sleepy, he only wanted to be awake and stroke her, touch her, find ways that he could hold her and touch her at the same time. With a shyness and a boldness and a doubting and a certainty all at once, all these things. She could marvel, a little, at how he had changed, how grown, how this one night had changed him. She only had room for a little, because mostly the rest of her was marvelling at herself.
This was not what she had come for, nothing that she had sought. Not what she had promised, to herself or to Peter. Or to his ghost. Not what she felt that life had promised her.
Still, it didn’t feel like breach of promise either; more like a step beyond, into a place no former promise could contain. She lay in the crook of Michael’s arm – his bad arm, because he could apparently manage this without hurt if they were careful, and that left his good hand free to roam, to his pleasure and to hers – and thought that she betrayed nobody in the doing of it.
And knew that almost nobody would agree with her, or believe her. Worried a little, whether Michael understood that too. He was so delighted with himself and with her, so enraptured, she thought it had perhaps slipped his mind that he could never tell anyone else about them. Not brag, not share, not confess. It was very much in his nature, she thought, to do all three, at sundry times in sundry situations. As it might be with his colleagues, with his closest girl-cousin, with his mother.
She did worry, then, but only a little. Only as much as she had room for. She had begun the evening feeling oh, so much older than he was, older by an eternity; now she thought she was acting even younger, kitten-young and absurd with it, unable to hold anything in her head that was not immediate and delightful, not here and now, not him.
This was meant to be treatment for a broken boy, nothing more. It wasn’t meant to touch her, change her, move her too.
She had surely known that she was broken too, but she’d meant to stay that way. She’d thought herself irreparable.
Now? Well.
Now his hand was on her breast and her bed was filled with the shape and weight of him, her head with the smell of him; it seemed to be enough.
She took a breath, touched his lips with her own – in our end is our beginning – and shaped the word more than said it.
‘Enough.’
He blinked, slowly and effortfully. Thought for a moment, thought he understood her, took his hand away. ‘I wasn’t—’
‘No. No, you weren’t,’ though she had to reach for his wrist, draw his hand back, replace it before he was reassured. Oh, how could he be so young? And why was she suddenly having to be the grown-up all over again? ‘But we have to get you out of here somehow, and back to your own proper bed; and soon enough –’ too soon – ‘that corridor out there is going to be busy again. Far too busy to smuggle a young man out of a nurse’s room unnoticed.’ He was, perhaps, beginning to smirk a little at the way she said that, with all its implications; she added, ‘It would ruin me.’ Quietly, sincerely spoken.
Nice boy: he sobered on the instant, nodded once, tossed back the sheet that covered them. And struggled a little to rise on his bad arm, until she kissed him again and called him an idiot, pointed out that she was lying on it.
She sorted herself out first and then him, helping him quite unnecessaril
y to his feet. They dressed together in the small space, and now they did have to help each other, finding clothes where they had been dropped or strewn, passing them from one to the other. Mostly she helped Michael, because dressing would be awkward for him even with room enough; and also – if she were honest, which she didn’t need to be because there was almost a ukase against talking – because she enjoyed it. These little intimacies seemed to bridge the gulf between the one thing and the other, between lover and nurse; she could be both, it seemed, and also something not quite either.
Together, then – with all the easy physical intimacy of nurse and patient overlaid with something more, a weary wonder that did keep drawing them back into contact even when she thought it should have been exhausted – they stood by her door as she swung it cautiously open.
Realized, as she did so, that she was still expecting to find Peter there. Outside, shut out, rejected.
At her back, Michael huffed with relief at the empty corridor. Relief coloured by a breathless giggle, because, however solemn he tried to be and however dreadful the weight of scandal that he might dimly sense hanging over her, he was still a young man at the latter end of an astonishment, an adventure barely hoped for and surely not foreseen. He wanted to whoop and caper, she knew that, she could feel it in him: all the tension of restraint, the sheer simple effort of adulthood. Perhaps he could learn to love that too, to be pleased with his own maturity, but he might need her help to see it.
She reached behind her to take his hand, simply for ease of guidance.
When she turned right out of her door, though, towards the stairs she knew, he tugged her the other way. The little window here barely let in any light; she frowned monumentally, just to be sure that he could see it.
He nodded, laid a finger on her lips, tugged again. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.
If he did, it was the first time tonight. She blessed the dark that hid her smile and followed him down towards the dead end of the corridor. Past one door and another and another, any or all of which might hide colleagues no longer sleeping, blundering about in the half light for dressing gown and sponge bag, hand reaching for the latch.
House of Doors Page 15
