And he might, by the same connivance, have brought ‘her’ here anyway. His telephone call might have been to the Hobday residence. ‘She’ might have had to speak into the telephone just as slyly and pretendingly. Did they communicate in such ways? Then turned up here, crunching the gravel, in her car. The Emmamobile. She might be here with him now.
But she couldn’t imagine it. Her flowery dress over the chair, her silky underwear. She was the one actually lying here, and shouldn’t she be grateful? Even if he’d be lying here beside the other one later. Two in one day. Was it possible? The Swan at half past one. But she couldn’t imagine it.
At the back of her mind was the scrambling thought that if his wife-to-be was in some way ‘arranged’ then the arrangement might include that she must be a flawless, untouched virgin, as if he were marrying a vase. And unlikely as it was — that he could promise himself to a vase — there must be some truth in her thought or some other reason for his lack of soon-to-be-married enthusiasm. If it were not the plain fact that he was lying here now with her.
In any case after minutes of mere stillness, of almost defiant inertia, he suddenly moved, and with an excessive upheaval of his limbs. The whole mattress rocked like a boat. He picked up the slipping ashtray and crushed the stub of his cigarette brutally against it.
And it was then, as she lifted one knee to counter the commotion, that she felt the trickle from between her legs: his seed leaving her, along with liquid of her own. She had other words than ‘seed’, but she liked the word seed. It might have happened at any moment, but its happening now, along with its seeping sadness, seemed almost like a sudden riposte. Well, it would be difficult for him now to be here, later, with her, the flowery one, if that was part of his plan.
Unless he were to tell her right now — she was still a maid, if not his — to replace the sheets.
It was crude arguing. It was what animals, who made no marriage vows and kept no servants, relied on. They marked their territory.
And she wasn’t going to say, now he was on his feet and the decision all but made, ‘Please, don’t go. Please, don’t leave me.’ She was disqualified from the upper world in which such dramas were staged. She had her lowly contempt for such stuff anyway. As if she couldn’t have used — but she wasn’t his wife, it was all the other way round — a different, quieter but fiercer language. Or just the bullet of a look.
In any case, there was the trickle between her legs.
He moved across the room. He might be going only to consult the time. Once again she was able to view him in his surly nakedness. Yes, he had a different walk without his clothes on, an animal walk.
He turned at the dressing table to look at her, holding his watch now in his hand. She hadn’t moved, dared to move, herself. There was only her lifted, theoretically coaxing knee, only her own unhiding nakedness to make him think again. He was taking it in, no more abashed, once again, about his looking than about his own display of himself. His cock was a little fuller but still merely hanging. And now he was familiarly winding the watch, blindly dealing with it even as he gazed.
‘Not quite a quarter to. If I step on it, I should make it. We’re meeting halfway. The Swan. She knows the people there. It was her idea.’
As if she, the Beechwood maid, knew anything about the Swan Hotel at Bollingford or how long it took to get there by car. But the party at Henley would have known? The young things were having their own private lunch. Well, you couldn’t blame them. After he’d commendably spent the morning with his law books.
But there was the little matter now of his getting dressed, of his making himself presentable, of his putting together again his outward person. He seemed in no hurry to do so. He looked at her, his eyes ran up and down her. He must have surely noticed the little patch between her legs.
She’d never known him show, even when actually hurrying, any sense of haste or unseemly agitation. Except, that is — but it seemed suddenly a very long time ago — when it had all been a boy’s uncurbable rush. She’d sometimes said to him, ‘Slow down.’ She’d even said, as if she were steeped in experience herself, ‘Slower is better.’
Well, they were steeped in experience now. He had never known anyone better, she was sure of it. Nor had she. It was in the look he gave her now. And in the stare she returned.
She found it difficult, even as she stared, not to let tears come into her eyes, even as she knew that to allow them, use them, would have been somehow to fail. She must be brave, generous, merciless in allowing him this last possible gift of herself.
Would he ever forget her, lying there like that?
And he was in no hurry. The sun from the window lit him. A bar or two of shadow ran across his torso. He finished winding the watch. His eventual car journey must be getting impossibly fast.
She didn’t know how he had acquired his sureness. Later, in her memory, she would marvel at it and be almost frightened by his possession of it then. It was the due of his kind? He was born to it. It came with having no other particular thing to do? Except be sure. But that, surely, would flood you with unsureness. On the other hand, to be a lawyer, merely a lawyer — she even felt it for him and saw him in a lawyer’s imprisoning dark suit — could only take his sureness away.
She thought momentarily and madly: Supposing she — Emma, Miss Hobday — had come to get him anyway. Supposing — this was 1924, it was the modern age — she had taken it upon herself to come here, in her car, to collect him now. To surprise him, drag him from his ‘mugging up’. On such a marvellous day. Wheels on the gravel. Her flowery voice — with a slight touch of horse — shouting up, as she noticed the opened window, knowing that it was his bedroom.
‘Come to get you, Paul! Where are you?’
What then? She had no doubt that he would have handled it all, somehow, surely. Even wearing just his signet ring. Even standing at the window. ‘Emsie, darling! What a surprise! Give me a mo to put a shirt on, would you?’
And how might she, the Nivens’ maid in the Sheringhams’ house, have handled it?
On the dressing table beside him were all the other little accoutrements of his life, sentimental or purposeful, each one like his own piece of unhidden treasure. Hairbrushes and combs. Cufflinks and studs in boxes. Photos in silver frames. A preponderance of silver, kept bright by Ethel. Maids had perpetually to dust round, not to mention actually polish such paraphernalia, making sure nothing was moved from its ordained position. Well, it was easier than a woman’s dressing table.
If you were brought up with such stuff attached to you, such personal insignia, then perhaps it was easy to be sure. Not to mention the contents of his wardrobe, in the adjacent dressing room — she had briefly seen it as she was bustled in. All his hanging choices. Not to mention other possessions scattered round the house.
All that she owned or wore could be put in one plain box. If she had to leave in a hurry, and she always might, she could.
But it was these little trinkets, this boys’ jewellery that seemed now to claim him, confirm him. Signet ring. Pocket watch. Cufflinks. When he was dressed and before he left he would gather up the initialled cigarette case and lighter. He would run the hairbrush across his hair, apply the tortoiseshell comb. His two brothers must have taken an assortment of such things, much of it perhaps newly and morale-boostingly purchased, when they went across to France, never to come back. Ivory-handled shaving brushes, that sort of thing. They, the brothers, were on the dressing table now, in silver frames. She’d noticed them as soon as she entered the room. That must be Dick and Freddy. Both in officers’ caps. She’d never seen them before. How could she have?