by Alan Hardy
“His conduct was a good deal more gentlemanly than yours, Matthew,” she said with feeling, giving him a nasty look.
He laughed, rather unpleasantly.
George Turnbill had surprised her. His behaviour was, ultimately, quite respectful. Once she made it clear she was having no silliness, he didn’t try to take advantage of her, and immediately obeyed her. Unlike Matthew, and his rough treatment of her. But then Matthew was such a silly boy. George was surer in such matters, of course, more sophisticated, quite suave and dexterous in the way he handled a woman. She knew that, and could imagine he would be a considerate, tender and fulfilling lover. But Matthew, whom she imagined could be quite clumsy—and she had had proof of it already—was another matter. However inept he was, however suspicious she was of him, and his motives, there was something about him… He just had to look at her with those yearningly beautiful eyes, and she was putty in his arms.
As she kept telling herself, he was the young man she should have met when she was eighteen. Was it all right to meet him when she was twenty years older, and not just meet him, but fall in love with him?
“Why did you want to see me, Fiona?” Matthew asked, glancing around the study Fiona had led him to.
“This is often where I used to sit when I wrote to you, Matthew,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Over there at the writing-desk.”
He swallowed, and scratched his nose, but said nothing.
“Here was where I often read your letters, pacing up and down, Matthew, up and down. Puzzling them out. Devouring them.”
She was doing that thing with her left eye again. It seemed to annoy him.
But he kept quiet.
“Malcolm, will you never answer me?”
Her bosom heaved from the emotional pressure she was under, as well as the tiny convulsions excited there by her constant wrist-rubbing.
Matthew stared at her.
“You look beautiful in that gown, Fiona.”
“Do I?”
She moved over to the writing-desk, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope.
She took it over to him, and handed it to him, her fingers scraping against his.
“Open it, Matthew. It’s a telegram from Freddie. It was sent a couple of days before his death.”
“VERY FEARFUL OF THE FUTURE,” Matthew read. “TERRIBLY WORRIED WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN. WANTED YOU TO KNOW. THINGS GOING ON.”
He folded the telegram, and put it and the envelope in his jacket’s inside pocket.
“All right if I keep this?”
“Of course… But what do you think of it?”
“Strain of combat and all that, I suppose,” he answered dismissively. “Happens to us all. Are you saying he had a premonition of his own death? Well, maybe he did. We all feel we might buy it at any moment when each day we’re…well, you know…in the thick of things…”
“But it’s more than that, Matthew,” she insisted. “He says strange things are going on, and he’s scared. Worried.”
“He didn’t say they were strange. He just said things were going on.”
“But what did he mean?”
“He was worried. Scared. Who isn’t in such a situation? I know I am. Things going on could refer to the ongoing operations, the plan of attacks, the objective of a sortie… Maybe he didn’t agree with the strategy, the direction of things. It was too dangerous, or something. I myself tend to think any sortie which involves more than just sitting in the ops-room drinking a cup of tea is totally unacceptable.”
“But, Matthew, you’re deliberately making light of it, I—”
“But I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make, Fiona.”
“Matthew,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “I know Freddie was brought down and killed by friendly fire. 20 mm cannon from a Spitfire.”
“How do you know that?” he snapped, looking irritated.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Who told you?”
“But, Matthew, I—”
“Was it Jackson? Or Turnbill? Was it Jenkins? Ah, I can see from your reaction it was our esteemed, half-witted Group Captain Jenkins. The man’s a fool.”
“Matthew, it doesn’t matter who it was. It still means—”
“Fiona,” he said, with a smile, “you’re not very good at hiding things, are you?”
“Aren’t I? What sort of things?”
“The secrets in your head, Fiona, the secrets you think nobody knows of.”
Fiona palpably shook at his words, sending shudders throughout her body, and causing Matthew to swallow hard again as he watched her ravenously, and shifted nervously on his feet.
“But, M-Matthew…” she stammered, clasping her hands together in front of her midriff, “I think this proves Freddie was murdered. He was deliberately shot down by someone on our side. And he feared something like that was going to happen. He told me so in the telegram.”
“What nonsense!”
“It’s not nonsense!”
“But, Fiona, such mishaps are only too common. I remember last year, in the midst of the Battle of Britain, I was nearly blown out of the sky by some British ack-ack gunners who mistook me for a 109. For God’s sake!”
“Matthew,” she said, straightening her shoulders, and pushing out her chest, “did you kill Freddie?”
He was speechless. Once again astonished by her.
“It was you, wasn’t it? I know it was. You blew him out of the sky, didn’t you?”
“But think what you are saying!”
“You did do it, didn’t you?”
“Why would I do it, Fiona?”
“You did it for me. You did it so that we could be together.”
“Darling Fiona, you’re completely insane.”
10
It was ten o’ clock, and Fiona was still in bed. She hadn’t slept much, if at all. She’d spent the whole night going over and over what had been said last night, and what had happened.
She bitterly remembered Matthew’s cruel words after she had told him of her suspicion that he had killed Freddie.
“Poor, poor Fiona,” he snarled contemptuously. “Poor little rich girl. You’ve had such a pampered, spoilt existence since birth that you know nothing of life. All your wishes and whims were satisfied as a child. You dreamt as a teenager that you had a God-given right to meet your Prince Charming, and then, when he never came, you didn’t blame your childish expectations, you didn’t grow up, you blamed the world, and all men, in particular the useless man you’d married. You thought it was his fault, you turned yourself against him and condemned him, and all men. You turned against even the idea of intimacy with a man. He was a silly, licentious man, I’m sure, but you withdrew into yourself, and railed against the filth men wanted to do, and only lived in your little dream world where you still clung to your fantasy of a Prince Charming, like a besotted teenager. And then a few letters, which reanimated all those dreams, made you fall in love with a man almost half your age. You’re a mass of nerves, obsessions and fantasies, and you still don’t know what’s real, and what’s not. You still, because of your spoilt, blindfolded life, think you can hide things in your head, and not face up to what you are, and what you’ve done, and should do.”
“How you despise me, Matthew…”
“I don’t despise you, Fiona… But you must come clean, you must face reality. Life isn’t just a question of assuming any toy you want will be immediately given to you. That’s not adult life, even for a rich woman like you. You put ideas in your head, because you were and are unhappy, disappointed, and looking for something to fulfil you, but it doesn’t mean you can just keep those ideas there in your head as your little secret. Don’t keep those secrets in your head, Fiona. You can’t hide forever. You’ll pay a price for it if you don’t open up.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Matthew.”
“I think you do… I think you do…”
His eyes were ablaze, fixed on her nervous, f
iddling hands, her tearful eyes, her hand pawing at her cheek, and mostly on her bare chest and shoulders, her cleavage palpitating and heaving as if it would burst.
And then something wrong happened. Something terrible. She, still after obsessing over it all night, couldn’t remember the sequence of movements.
She found herself in his arms. He was pawing at her. He was kissing her. Her lips, face, neck, shoulders, her breasts. He was rubbing and caressing her whole body, in places she believed no man should touch a woman he is not married to.
She felt sure she called on him to stop, but not too loudly in case the servants, and other guests, heard and rushed in, and he would have had to stop.
She was touching him too in all the places a decent woman shouldn’t. She was kissing him. Biting him. Sucking him.
Then he was inside her. There and then in the study. On the sofa. Up against the wall. Smashing against the drinks-cabinet, making glasses and bottles clink, barging into other furniture pieces and making the legs squeak and grate.
He was on top of her. She was gasping like a demon. Her body was on fire, writhing like a dying animal in its final pain.
She was on top of him, wriggling, pushing, and twisting, compressing into a few minutes everything she had learnt of lovemaking with Freddie over thirteen years.
Well, at least she had found some use for him in the end.
The love-making was an insatiable hunger. A need that could be satisfied only by never being satisfied, and never ending.
It was wrong. She knew it was wrong. But she couldn’t stop. Matthew couldn’t stop.
She thought she would die.
But she didn’t.
She achieved an ecstasy which animated every inch of her body. Something she probably hadn’t felt since she was a girl of sixteen, seventeen or eighteen when she’d been lying on a bed with her friends at boarding-school—all girls together—fondling each other’s young, half-naked bodies as they spoke of their dreams, and dreamt of what they spoke.
And now she was lying in bed. Distressed. Tormented. Tainted. Forlorn. So alone.
It was nearly eleven o’ clock. She couldn’t lie here forever, going over and over what had happened.
Her body was still itchy. Aroused by its shuffling, stirring, shifting movements in bed. Her involuntary shuddering. Her hands resting on her flesh.
She had to get up.
She had to show herself to the servants. There were garden fetes to organize, letters to sign, cheques to nod through or not.
Secrets to keep hidden.
People to see. The gardener. The cook. The butler. Her sister, Julia, who was coming to pick up the children, who had stayed overnight. Matthew.
Matthew. Matthew would be coming. He’d promised.
After the… Well, after the lovemaking, and the frenetic tidying-up, re-arranging of ruffled, creased clothes—her gown was wet from her sweat—they had arranged for him to call today. Well, she had asked him.
She had had to make herself presentable enough to thank, nod at, embrace, shake hands with her guests as they, agonizingly slowly, left.
Her auburn hair, which had been nicely coiffured for the occasion, must have looked an absolute mess. Her face too excited, too post-coitally shiny. Her body sticky, with an unpleasant, earthy smell.
He would be here soon.
She dressed herself soberly. Quite conservatively. A black jacket and skirt. A few frills on the lapels, but not too many.
Her hair was still too wavy and fluffy to be smoothed away into a bun, so she collected a fair bit of it in a net at the back, so that it hanged down slightly to rest on her jacket collar.
She had to achieve some sort of modus vivendi with Matthew. They had to manage to get along. She didn’t know where she was with him. It wasn’t just a question of what had happened between them last night, which, by the way, she felt should not be repeated. There were all the other things which remained unresolved between them.
Sex between them was wrong. They weren’t married, or engaged, or anything like that. And she was much older than him, thirty-eight to his twenty-three perhaps. A decent woman—and she had always been a decent woman—didn’t behave like that. She had had a moment of weakness, of which she was ashamed. Matthew had taken advantage of her, it was true, but it was the woman who should have the last say on such matters. It was up to the woman to stop it. But she had wanted to make love to him. But it mustn’t go on. Otherwise, she would be a woman like Paula, or even Belinda Jackson. There were lines of decorum and morality one stepped over at one’s peril.
She had given in to lust, and sexual indulgence. Maybe for the first time. She regretted it, but, at the same time, didn’t regret it. If it remained a one-off incident, then it might be all right. Otherwise, Matthew himself, let alone Fiona herself, would rightly consider her to be no more than a fallen woman.
Matthew was so young. He made love like a young man. Passionate, uncontrolled, and a little clumsy. What she remembered of her unsavoury bouts with Freddie suggested he, Freddie, in cold, technical terms, was much more proficient and able at lovemaking, even if all his prodding, twisting, and contorting had always left her feeling nauseous. Even, at times, with the urge to throw up all over his smarmy, greasily perspiring body. She imagined from her slight experience of George Turnbill that he too would be much more expert in such actions. Matthew resorted to a young man’s bluster and roughness to cover up his insecurity and inexperience, but… But his passion… His passionate abandon, clumsy as it was at times, his body bashing into her, his legs hitting against her shins, his teeth and saliva grating and slobbering against and on her… His passion…well…
She only needed to gaze into his intense, blue eyes to become lost in the sweltering sea of his tempestuous passion.
A clumsy touch from Matthew was like a glimpse of heaven. A bout of expert lovemaking from Freddie or, probably, George, was like an unwelcome knock on the door when you’re having an afternoon nap.
Matthew’s wounding words of last night were true. She, approaching the age of forty, was back in the world of teenage dreams. She, at thirty-eight, had found that juvenile, overwhelming love she had never found when she was a juvenile herself.
The dreams she had kept hidden in her head all these years had seeped out, and wrapped themselves around a real person, and real events, and real lovemaking.
What would become of those dreams now? Would they survive out in the real, unclear, complex world? Would they find a way of accommodating themselves to reality, or would they wither and die in this nasty, cruel world?
But there were other problems. Other secrets. Other things in her head.
A good many of them touched on Matthew.
Why did he never quite admit he was the writer of the letters, even though he had come the closest to doing so last night? Why not just hold up his hands and admit it?
She couldn’t understand it.
Also, what was going on between Matthew and George Turnbill, and between Paula Wentworth and, possibly, the two of them?
Why did Matthew get George to pretend to be the letter-writer? And coach him on what to say to her?
Was there any significance to Matthew, George, Freddie and Paula all being in roughly the same theatre of war when Freddie and Flight Lieutenant Wentworth were lost in action?
And why was she a little scared of Matthew? Was it just because he could read her mind so well? He knew all her secrets, perhaps? He was probing analytically and painstakingly within the innermost depths of her mind, and laying out, like on a pathologist’s table, every bit of her inner being?
Why had he warned her to be careful? Why did he make her shudder at times? Why did George specifically warn her against Matthew? He told her Matthew meant her harm. What did he mean? In what way?
She had to find out.
There were things hidden in her head. And there were things hidden from her. She wanted to reveal to herself those things which were hidden from her, and Matthew want
ed to discover those things she kept hidden.
How to reach a modus vivendi? What was the answer? How could she manage to protect herself? How could she make some sort of viable pact with Matthew?
The ultimate question was obvious. If she found the answer to that question, then all would be solvable. She could evolve a plan of action. She could find a way out.
The 64,000-dollar question was not whether Matthew had killed Freddie or not, important as that was. No, the question she had to ask was quite simple, even if the answer wouldn’t be.
Who, exactly, was Matthew? And what on earth was he up to?
11
It was the first time she had seen Matthew without his uniform.
He was dressed in a smart, black coat, unbuttoned, which revealed a white shirt, a loose, grey jumper, and black slacks. Looking so casual, without the formal attire of buttoned-up uniform and tie, he was gorgeous, and seemed even younger than normal.
He listened dutifully enough when she explained how she felt about what had happened.
Basically, she didn’t want a relationship with him which would descend into nothing more than a squalid affair. What had happened yesterday evening was over and done with, and neither of them was to blame more than the other.
She wanted to be treated with respect, and hoped she could rely on him not to try to take advantage of her.
She said she also thought they should be open with each other, and try to be as honest as possible about their lives.
At that point, Matthew laughed.
She became quite anxious, and, as always, alternated between her two nervous tics, rubbing a wrist and wiping an eye. Her face paled, and her expression saddened.
“What a mess you are, Fiona,” he said savagely. “A complete psychological mess!”
She wanted to cry again.
“Why do you treat me like this?” she shouted. “You’re so cruel! So beastly!”
She was like the spoilt, angry child Matthew had ridiculed last night. She seemed close to stamping her feet.
He stared at her. She must have resembled something approaching a gibbering wreck, all jabbering, stop-and-start movements, and tears forming more quickly than they could be wiped away.
