I shook her gently. "You find my socks and make me some tea. I love you."
"Yes. Yes I will." She retrieved the socks from under the dressing table and brought them over to me. "I've washed your feet with my tears," she said. She brushed them lightly with her hair. "Washed your feet with my tears and dried them with my hair."
She put on my socks for me and laced my shoes. Then she went out of the room. She stopped at the door as if she'd been hit or as if a hundred-mile-an-hour gale had sprung up and she were bracing herself against it. Then she put her hand to her belly very slowly. "Give me my bag, Joe."
I ran across to her. "What is it, dearest?"
"Nothing at all." Her face was tense with fear as if the gale, inch by inch, were driving her over the edge of the cliff. She swallowed two tablets from the bag and I felt her body relax. "Don't look so worried, Joe. It's only an illness peculiar to women. I won't die."
"But you only - "
"There's more than one kind, precious. Just you sit down and wait for the tea." She kissed me on the forehead. "I do love you, Joe."
I sat on the pink-and-flame chintz bedspread, surrounded by the photographs and the glass menagerie and the scent sprays and the potpourri vases and the flowers and the copies of The Stage and Theatre Arts , feeling empty myself, knowing in a flash what it was to be Alice; it was as if I myself had that pain in my belly, as if, by an effort of will, we'd changed bodies.
After supper I left the flat before her, as usual. Striding along in the dim corridor with its silence as different from real silence as a barbitone trance from natural sleep I thought suddenly: There's no need for me to leave her. Going down the spiral staircase I kept hearing her words: I want to do everything for you, I want to have your children. It was possible, it was real; I could be with her all the time, we could become as firmly rooted and as good as my father and my mother. We could enter into marriage, not just acquire a license for sexual intercourse - I was old enough to cease chasing phantoms, to enjoy Now in its true colours, not spoiled by the silly iridescence of dreams.
As I came out into the street I felt a tap on my shoulder. I wheeled round. It was Eva Storr.
"You look guilty," she said. "What are you doing so far from home?"
"What are you doing, my sweet?"
Standing there with her plump little body brushing mine and her round black eyes staring at me, she reminded me of a bird. But birds not only sing and dance across the sky, they swoop down to their victim from a thousand feet, and they peck dead men's eyes out - or living men's if they dare.
"I've been seeing an old friend," she said. "All aboveboard."
"Female of course?"
"I went to school with her."
"All right. I believe you." I took her arm. "Going on the bus?" I wanted to get her away quickly; the Fiat was parked nearby.
"I've no option. Bob couldn't fiddle any extra petrol this month."
"Do you good to be among the common people."
She pushed away my arm. "Wrong way round." She put her arm in mine. "There, I'm not so affectionate as Susan, but I'll do for tonight, won't I? God help us if anyone's watching. You'd be surprised if you knew how many Warley people come to Leddersford."
I was armoured against her now. As we walked down the drive I said, in what can only be described as a bitchy snarclass="underline" "Your chastity's too well known, darling."
She didn't take away her arm. "You're being sarcastic."
"Oh no. I respect you, Mrs. Storr."
She appeared to disregard this. "You haven't told me whom you've been visiting."
"An old friend."
"Man or woman?"
"That's telling." There wasn't anything else I could say; I contemplated the invention of an old RAF friend, but lies are always dangerous. And I didn't dare mention Elspeth's name.
"Look," I said, pointing to the west. The sun was setting, going down like a battleship, its flaring red extinguishing itself in the black sea of Leddersford. The great bulk of the mansion began to erupt little yellow lights and I could hear the soft clicks of drawing curtains. "A good sunset always gives me the hell of a kick," I said.
"Does it?" Eva put her head on my shoulder for a second. "If your friend's male you should tell him not to use lavender water," she said.
23
And that was why, only three days later, I found myself staring at a letter from Susan.
I don't want to see you ever again. I didn't listen when people told me about you and her but now I know that all the time we've been going together you've been making love to her. I'll be going abroad soon so it's no use your writing or telephoning. You've been very bad to me and what hurts most is that you were telling lies all the time. I expect you thought that I was too young and silly to make you happy. Perhaps I was; but now I feel grown up. I hope you will be happy and get all the things you want so much. I don't feel angry with you, only sad and hurt, as if someone I loved had died.
It was a nicely expressed letter, all things considered; the first I'd had from her or any other woman. In a way, it was a relief; I wasn't obliged any more to spend even that figurative shilling; all my physical and emotional capital could go to Alice. The affair was neatly rounded off - it was rather flattering, too, that I should be the reason of her sadness. As if someone I loved had died - I made a mental note of the phrase. It conveyed the fact that she had loved me, that everything was over, and that she was most distressed about it, without descending to abuse or threats of suicide. It was a Grade Two letter; a woman of my own grade could never - even if she'd got round to writing a letter - have achieved that innocent, dignified, elegiac note.
Smiling, I opened Charles's letter.
I'm settling down happily in London, though so far I've been unable to find one of the rich old sugar- mammies with whom, I'd been given to understand, the place abounded. However, I'm now entangled with the Children's Librarian, a delicious little Grade 5 - if not 4 (intelligent at least she agrees with everything I say), untampered-with I'll take my oath, and, to my great surprise and joy, with a daddy who is a MANAGING DIRECTOR. Mind you, it's a small firm, and daddy has three sons - big boozy clots who are all continually wasting the Old Man's substance: one's at Oxford, another's a writer and gets far too generous an allowance, and the eldest is in the business and draws far too big a salary. No one gives a thought to poor little Julia - but she has in me a devoted defender, you may be sure.
But that isn't what I wanted to ask you about. Before the dark night of matrimony descends upon us - or at any rate, upon me - how about this holiday in Dorset? I've got the offer of a cottage at Cumley, which is at the head of a little cove near Lulworth. Roy Maidstone will share expenses with us and we can have a fortnight's fishing, swimming, drinking, and, I hope, sinful goings-on with the local wenches who, everyone says, are stupid, loving, and passionate, and smell of hay and honeysuckle.
The only snag is that the place is only available from the 20th of June to the 11th July, and Roy and I can't get down until the 24th. It's only four days we shan't be getting our money's worth for but it niggles me rather. You said you could get away on the 20th - so if you'd like to go on ahead of us and draw up a list of likely virgins and places of historical interest and so on, the picturesque little residence is all yours. Or you can stay at my digs - it's up to you ...
I smiled again. Alice and I had been making vague plans to go away together even if only for one night. She was going to visit an old friend in London in July. George was going to the Continent on business -
"You've let your tea go cold, Joe," Mrs. Thompson said.