On his own he would have cut a wide enough gap for a tank to get through. ‘You don’t believe I’m daft enough to do it?’
‘I don’t know. Do you know the difference between right and wrong? I sometimes wonder.’
So did he, feel the guise of Herbert getting away from him, slipping — sloping almost — over the horizon, and too far off ever to be brought back, a dim unreal person set apart, a pair of muddy heels vanishing in the distance. He found it frightening, fragmenting, but the fright coming and going like one of his other selves. It wasn’t always easy to feel convinced that he was who he was supposed to be at the moment. Often it was hard to tell even when he thought he most certainly knew. He came back to Herbert sufficiently to say: ‘I absolutely am aware of the difference between right and wrong. But anyone who does wrong not realizing that he does so is a fool.’
She thought better of continuing the sort of argument he would never let her win, and to divert him mentioned a burglary they’d had at the office a few nights ago.
‘Did they get much?’
‘Oh, some stamps. But they took two typewriters, and an adding machine.’
He looked into the sky, thinking he might have to call Bert back. ‘Nothing’s safe, I suppose. Life’s an ongoing guerrilla war between the rich and the poor.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we’re not rich, and I’ll bet they’re not poor. So it’s wrong, whatever you say.’
Nor did he feel it was time for an argument. ‘I suppose you’re right, if I think about it.’
They ate sandwiches, corned beef for him, and lettuce and cheese for her. He drew her down on to the cape and kissed her, as gently as he hoped would be preferred, lips roaming to her forehead and eyes. She liked it, and put her arms around him in a relaxed way. They lay as if half-asleep and, it seemed to him as well as to her, perfectly harmonized with the smell of warm herbage and the rustling from trees behind.
‘I love you.’ He omitted the word ‘duck’, his love only true as far as the scorching desire of his groin. ‘I’ll never forget today,’ he murmured, warm breath caressing her ear. ‘Our lie-down together on the Gotham Hills will stay in my memory forever.’
‘I love you as well, but my arm’s going dead.’ He moved, an opportunity to readjust so that his hand could reach her ankle. He stroked the lisle covering between kisses and, crabwise, finger by finger, but in the slowest motion, inched as far as her calf, then let the hand rest awhile. She seemed unaware of his purpose, or at least she said nothing. Perhaps she liked the perspirational closeness, and enjoyed what he was doing, as long as he did it with gentleness and consideration. He assumed she wanted him to go on, so resumed the sly and tactical creep, her skirt ascending with his hand.
He toyed in the silky cavern at the back of the knee, and felt her passion increase, though perhaps it was only in his own mind. Motionless together on the hillside, like an outcrop of two bizarre rocks, he felt himself close to victory as the sweet and lingering kisses were returned.
His eyes were fully open before the final advance when, looking beyond her shoulder, he saw an animal fifty yards away, which he at first thought was a large dog, and wondered how the hell it came to be there. A reddish pelt glowed in the reflected sun, its long nose sniffing the breeze for prey. Clean and sturdy, as if fresh out of creation, an elect ruler of all it saw, the still pose seemed fixed forever: a fox.
For Cecilia to see it would be a unique treat, except that by pointing the scene out he would have to shift his besieging hand, which had gained its position after so much pertinacity. Telling her would make their hillside idyll even more memorable, an unforgettable prelude to the fucking she was going to get, and her gratitude would be everlasting, but he became Bert and Herbert both, and gloried in the fox whose resplendent orange brightness against dull green joined the two parts of him together. They had never been so close, and he took a lesson in the fox’s stillness to say nothing.
The encroaching hand under her skirt had a mind of its own, even so. Nor was the increasing pressure between his legs any help towards a decision. Under cover of a series of softened kisses his hand went higher, till a stiffened finger touched the rim of her knickers, and felt for a glorious second the texture of hair.
She moved. ‘Do you want all of Nottinghamshire to see what’s going on?’
He wouldn’t have cared if Leicestershire and Derbyshire were getting a look in as well. Nobody was visible, as far as he could see, and if some modern chiker had invested in a pair of binoculars to further his foul ends good luck to him — though if he caught anybody doing such a thing he’d pound them to blood and gristle.
At her movement the fox melted back into the woods, and she would never be aware of what, by his unity with the animal, he had allowed her to miss. He looked at his watch. ‘We’d better go, if we want to be back by dusk.’
She stood, and held him close, and he knew that the wrench away from loving had been as hard for her as for him. ‘We’ll do it soon, darling. I want it too, but it really wouldn’t be good to start anything here.’
Pride made him say it didn’t matter, and kiss her tenderly, telling himself that soon had better mean what it implied or he wouldn’t bother wasting much more time on her. Love ought to have some substance, and the wetter the better. His pocket hadn’t been lightened by the weight of a single french letter. Luckily he didn’t have cold rice pudding down his leg, though the tumescence was plain for her to see.
While reading The Times, clandestinely acquired with the Daily Mirror on his way through town that morning, he was disturbed by Mrs Denman calling that Archie was on his way upstairs. Bert put the newspaper under his pillow, and swung round to undo a packet of cigarettes.
Archie smiled forlornly, and put a weighty package on the bed. ‘I got this for yer.’ He wore his weekend suit, with collar and tie, though such a smart rig did not take attention from his black eye and scuffed face.
‘What ’appened to yo’?’ Bert said.
He sat on the spare chair, head down as if to hide the worst patches. ‘Got my comeuppance, din’t I?’
‘It bleddy looks like it. What ’appened?’
‘The other evening it was. Cherie and me was all set for a bit of delicious hearthrug pie when her ’usband comes back to the house with some of his pals. One at the front, but two at the back. I ran straight into the two at the back, the cunning bastards. Then all three set on to me. Some fucker must have shopped us.’
Bert grinned, the only response being: ‘Shall we go out and get the fuckpigs? Give ’em a real pastin’?’ Such an offer of assistance was all that could be made, after the hastily considered and rejected alternative of taking the mickey out of Archie for his misadventure. The problem was that after taking the mickey out of someone like Archie there wouldn’t be much left to take. Should Archie feel the consequences of such an emptying, which he probably would, being more sensitively acute than many, he might go into a berserker’s fit and take the house to pieces. Mrs Denmah wouldn’t like that. Nor, thought Herbert, would I.
Yet there was always more to Archie than anyone would suppose. ‘You never know, Bert,’ he said. ‘Maybe one day I’ll get a scar as bad as yourn, then I’ll ’ave all the women I like — maybe even a posh whore will fall for me. Anyway, I’ll get ’em sooner or later.’ He stood to unwrap the parcel. ‘Let ’em stew a bit. It’s the luck o’ the game, anyway.’
‘Where did you get this?’ A neat little portable typewriter lay snug in its shining black case. Herbert put it on the table and clipped it open, all keys and tappets shining, a black and red ribbon already installed. He hoped it wasn’t one of those taken from Cecilia’s office, though it was too late to worry about that. In any case, they didn’t use portables in offices.