He watched her pick up the receiver. He heard her say hello. He saw her expression change – Bee listened, then gasped, ‘Where are you?’ The colour in her cheeks heightened and she cast a furtive glance in his direction. (He was sure he hadn’t imagined it.) ‘Look here – I -’ She bit her lip. ‘Very well.’
Colville pretended to be absorbed in the Telegraph and rustled it ostentatiously.
‘Oh, thanks for reminding me, sweetie,’ Beatrice said. ‘I am such a chump! I forgot. It completely slipped my mind!’
Bee had spoken these last words in an over-loud voice, shouted almost, for his benefit, clearly. She must have a poor opinion of his intelligence, Colville reflected gloomily. Replacing the receiver, she told him it had been Alessandro, her hairdresser. She had completely forgotten that she had made an appointment at the hairdresser’s for ten! She stood looking at him, like a bold little girl. There was a curl of hair lying across the side of her forehead and touching her left eyebrow, which the bright sunlight turned to filaments of gold. Colville wanted to run to her, put his arms around her, bury his face in her neck, hold her tight and ask her -no, beg her – not to leave him – ever! Bee had gone up to her room, then reappeared, wearing a hat made of shiny black straw and dark glasses that instantly transformed the way she looked, imparting to her the mysterious air of the archetypal beautiful spy of fiction. She had put on a mauve shade of lipstick, not her usual dark-rose red, which further altered her appearance. (She didn’t want to be recognized, clearly.) She then pecked him perfunctorily on the cheek, turned round and was gone. Her hairdresser was in Oxford and she said she was going to drive; she was taking the Mini. She had looked tense and nervous, but also excited.
Colville buried his face in his hands. He was convinced that Bee was off to a secret rendezvous somewhere. Bee was going to meet a man – her lover – at some roadside motel. Colville’s heart stopped at the thought of Bee writhing naked in a strange man’s arms, moaning and gasping and laughing. He felt shivers run through his body. Another thought followed. No, not a strange man – she had gone to meet Payne, Antonia Darcy’s husband.
Colville had noticed that Bee hadn’t been the same since the day of the Paynes’ visit. Something happened that day. Bee had laughed even at Payne’s silliest remarks. For the life of him, Colville couldn’t remember what Payne had actually said – some nonsense about the Light Brigade – but he did believe that Payne’s remarks had contained hints and innuendo, encoded messages, to which Bee responded. Payne was the kind of man who wooed his women with puns, quotations and oblique compliments. Glances of complicity had passed between them, of that Colville was sure. Although Payne was at pains to conceal the fact, he had been smitten with Bee!
Bee had exercised her compelling power over him. Like Circe, Bee could unhinge a man with one toss of her tangled blonde curls! Payne had sat pretending indifference, but all along he had watched her covertly, drinking her in, his eyes as busy as coals just thrown on a fire.
The night before, in their bedroom, Bee had initiated an odd kind of conversation. She had started talking about certain African tribesmen who offered their wives to favoured visitors for the night. She knew he was interested in Africa – did he approve or disapprove? Bee had demanded an immediate answer. She had been in a peculiar mood, intense, febrile, peremptory. Well, it was an African custom, Colville said – he neither approved nor disapproved. She had shaken her head and sighed gustily, indicating she found his answer unsatisfactory.
‘You disapprove – admit it,’ she challenged him.
‘I don’t disapprove,’ he said.
‘Then you approve? Say you approve!’
‘I neither approve, nor disapprove.’
‘You disapprove! I knew it!’ Bee had cried triumphantly. It had been the silliest of conversations. When he tried to kiss her, she pushed him away, saying she had a raging headache. She then picked up a book from her bedside table, the biography of the imperial Russian dancer Mathilde Kschessinska. Mathilde, she informed him inconsequentially, had bedded at least five Romanovs and at one stage had lived in a menage a trois with two grand dukes, by one of whom she had a son. Bee’s eyes had been very bright and her voice had contained a provocative note.
Was he paranoid to think Bee’s choice of conversational topics suggestive?
It was very warm in the sitting room. He couldn’t breathe. He was aware he was still hugging the silk cushion. He could hear the loud ticking of the clock and the buzzing of a fly somewhere. He was reminded of his old school – the same mixture of misery and cosiness and numbed longing. He felt his depression deepening.
He reached out and picked up the Polaroid camera that lay on the coffee table, thinking back to the day before yesterday. They had been so happy. Deliriously, insanely happy. Each one of us should live only for the other. That was what Bee had said. She had sounded as though she meant it. They had been gazing into each other’s eyes. Colville’s fingertips caressed the camera. That interval of white thigh between Bee’s black stocking and knickers alone was enough to drive him out of his mind…
His love for Bee was no ordinary love. The fire of his passion was a burning forest, spreading fast, leaping rivers, consuming landscapes. Telling her that had been a mistake, he now realized. He shouldn’t have put it quite in those terms.
Darling, do you know what? You are becoming too possessive – too Swannish. No, not ‘swinish’, you chump! Swannish. Like in Swann and Odette? Remember? Eaten by jealousy. Girls don’t really like burning forests. It scares them, so beware.
Bee had uttered these words with one of her light laughs, but it made him wonder. Beware of what? Was she trying to warn him, to prepare him for what she had already made up her mind to do? So that it shouldn’t be too great a shock?
Too many heartbreaks and too many betrayals bleed a man dry and they lead to the secluded passions of the voyeur. Bee had said that too – apropos of nothing in particular – the silly nonsense she talked sometimes! Colville frowned. She couldn’t know, could she, that sometimes, when she was not there, he liked to sneak upstairs and go repeatedly through the soft dresses and perfumed gossamer underclothes in her bedroom drawers and wardrobe. He liked nothing better than to hold them to his face and breathe in their intoxicating aroma…
Colville knew his limitations. He was a dull dog. He wasn’t really clever. He wasn’t amusing or in any way interesting. He didn’t say things that were witty or droll. He didn’t read Proust, though he suspected Bee’s knowledge of Swann and Odette was derived from the film, that lush costume drama they had watched together last month, rather from the book… He wasn’t much to look at. Well, he was – middle-aged. Payne wasn’t exactly a youth either, but he seemed to have a certain something he, Colville, clearly lacked. Payne had the slightly pointed ears and the half wistful, half malicious look of a faun.
Colville glanced at the clock. Where was Bee now? Not knowing was worse than knowing the worst! He had thought of following her, of jumping into his car and driving after her at a distance, all the way to her final destination, of lurking outside the motel room door and catching her in the act – but had fought down the impulse. What if she saw him in her rear-view mirror? What if she was going to her hairdresser’s after all? She would never forgive him. She would be dismayed – furious! If only he had known she was going out in her car, he would have poured sugar in the petrol tank – that would have made driving impossible, though of course it would have destroyed the car engine completely. Too late now!
Swann in Love. Bee had ordered the DVD specially and had watched it a dozen of times already. She clearly identified with the courtesan Odette. That poor chap Swann – tormented by unrelenting sexual desire – crazed by jealousy – constantly pleading – forever declaring his ungovernable love – allowing his craving for Odette to turn his life upside down… Was he really like Swann?