It was a last ploy to call his bluff, but she knew it wouldn’t work, and hoped it wouldn’t, and it didn’t, though under her confidence she wondered where it would lead — if anywhere.
So did Handley as he helped her into her coat and caught another whiff of her subtle expensive perfume, and a glimpse of the pearls laying along the pale flesh of her neck.
From the long corridor he could see it was the sort of flat that cost a hundred pounds a week to rent furnished. Everything was Harrod’s best, tables of expensive rosewood, dark green panelling, heavy half-drawn curtains, an elaborate dressing-table with a pink marble top, built-in wardrobes (a bad touch that, he felt) and a high, enormous bed which redeemed everything. She’d led him straight into the bedroom so that the maid wouldn’t twig.
He stood alone, smoking a cigar and blessing such unexpected luck, his back to the empty fireplace. Or was it luck? There was no saying, though he couldn’t think she’d shown him to her bedroom for a drink of beer. There were no pictures or ornaments on the walls, and only a faint sound of traffic through the double wondows.
She clicked the door to. ‘I hate cigars. Do put it out.’
Sitting at the dressing-table, she lifted off her wig. Its sudden absence diminished her face, made it slightly less thin, and dark hair underneath was so short she resembled Joan of Arc.
‘Don’t kiss me,’ she said, when he went to her. ‘And don’t undress me. Just take your clothes off.’
He didn’t trust her, though he had nothing to lose so could see no reason for it. But he got out of his jacket, shirt and trousers, watching her observing him through the dozen mirrors, and noting the slightly exaggerated curve of her lips, as if she too didn’t know why he was there. If you couldn’t kiss her, how else could you lead up to it?
Her short wispy hair made her look younger and more vulnerable, as if she ought to be glad of having him in her bedroom rather than trying to make him feel so privileged. Her face was also a little hard in its thinness, and the mix-up gave to her eyes a mocking air that he wanted to get rid of.
‘It’s a fine bedroom. It suits you.’
She took off her pearls and bracelets. ‘I camp here. You should see the bedroom at Flaxton, my country place. It would make your mouth water, I’m sure.’
‘I like this one.’
‘It’s mine,’ she smiled, standing to let her skirt fall. ‘My husband is allowed to visit me in it now and again.’
The transformation from the elegant Lady Ritmeester with the elaborate and high-piled coiffure to the short-haired naked thin woman with a smile like a Hampstead housewife off for an afternoon with her boyfriend was so disconcerting that he found it erotic, and went towards her. The remains of her personality had retreated into her voice. She backed away and said in the normal Ritmeester timbre: ‘Don’t. I’ll come to you.’
Since they weren’t more than a few feet apart he could afford to wait, though to pass the time he took off his pants and stood naked. She reached out and touched him in the only spot that seemed to matter, for under her delicate fingers it lifted, a very obedient horn. Her small breasts lured him because he had never seen any so perfectly white. Even the nipples were pale and merged into the flesh. The rest of her body was firm, and only slightly less pale, and he bent forward and kissed her slender neck, his hand on her stomach.
They stroked each other, and Handley was locked in the circle of her as if gripped by fatigue. His dream made him feel she was the most powerful woman he’d ever met, and he was disturbed at his liking for her, though his ready mechanism of self-preservation pushed it immediately away. ‘Don’t let’s burst,’ he said, noticing her eyes were closed, and pressing her gently.
‘Don’t touch me there,’ she said, when his hand went between them. He wondered if they were to do it by extra-sensual perception, or some such mystical stuff, but he wasn’t prepared to enter a brother and sister act either, so pushed her firmly towards the bed. She let herself on to the counterpane, eyes staying closed.
‘Not yet,’ she said, opening her legs. He knelt beside her on the bed, able to stare because she still refused to look at him. Her fingers rippled at herself, and suddenly her whole body played with some sensation he wasn’t allowed to share.
Unable to resist, and he assumed he was not meant to (you had to be careful with such a woman), and being at full height, he slid lusciously into her. Whenever he tried a kiss she moved her face, so he had to be satisfied with neck and shoulders, shifting gently as if afraid of breaking her, none of the usual forceful thrusting, but slowly and tenderly, one hand spread under her buttocks until another trembling broke deeply inside her, so that this time he got the force of it. Her dry breath jerked strongly out of her nostrils and against his cheek. A few moments later he also came, a weird flood that filled her narrow tunnel. It was an issue too soon for his taste, but he was never at his best on a fed stomach and a bottle of wine.
‘Get off me.’
He lifted himself. ‘Thank you.’ There seemed nothing else to say, though he would rather have lain a bit longer.
‘Get dressed.’
‘Why do you keep your eyes closed?’
‘It’s much better,’ she said. ‘I get my enjoyment more quickly. I go into other worlds.’
‘What worlds?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Of course I bloody well would.’ He put on his underwear and shirt, grateful for some explanation at least. While his back was turned for his trousers she leapt silently off the bed towards a grey silk dressing gown.
‘Does your husband know you carry on like this?’
She sat by the dressing-table and lit a cigarette. ‘He thinks I have lesbian relationships, and that’s all right.’
‘Do you?’
‘Sometimes. Just to allay his suspicions — or to head them off.’
The encounter had left him feeling deprived, as if it had been too civilised. ‘I expect he likes to watch.’
She frowned. ‘He’s not perverted. As long as I tell him about them.’
He was half-way to lighting a cigar, but remembered she didn’t like her bedroom stunk up — which made him want to get on the street where he could be free and in peace.
‘One has to live,’ she said. ‘And there are many ways of doing it.’ Her wig was back. ‘Perhaps you’d better go.’
He put his coat on. ‘How do I get to kiss you?’
‘You’ll have to marry me.’
‘You already are,’ he grinned.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, so am I, come to that.’
He had lost his patter, which was another gauge of her success. ‘What does your wife do while you’re out with other women?’
‘She doesn’t know.’
Lady Ritmeester laughed. ‘Have you asked her?’
‘No.’
‘Then how do you know?’ She had found his weak spot. He trusted too much in his own strength. And what a big weak spot it was — such non-existent strength! ‘Still,’ she said, not wanting to warn him of the disaster she saw in store, ‘you can hardly complain if she does the same as you.’
‘I won’t. But how do we keep in touch?’
She smiled. ‘We don’t.’
‘You serious?’
‘Don’t ever telephone me.’
‘I’ll walk up and down outside with a sandwich board over me, saying DAPHNE I, LOVE YOU on one side, and KISS ME, DAPHNE on the other.’
He was almost back on form, so she could be more indulgent. She hated men who became serious afterwards.
‘Perhaps we’ll meet at the gallery.’
That was enough. Why push too far? He blew a kiss, and she sent one back. Sweethearts at least. ‘Do let yourself out,’ she said. ‘I feel a headache coming on.’