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‘I suppose your brother’s coming again?’
‘He might.’
He kept his back bravely turned while he adjusted tie, collar, and jerked his jaw this way and that to check his shave. Then, with all pretexts used, he remained rigid, his hand on his tie knot, looking into the mirror past his left cheek at the body of his wife, which was disposed prettily on the bed, weight on its right elbow, its two white forearms engaged in the movements obligatory for filing one’s nails. He let his hand drop and demanded: ‘What do you mean, he might?’ She did not answer, but held up a studied hand to inspect five pink arrows. She was a thin, very thin, dark girl of about eighteen. Her pose, her way of inspecting her nails, her pink-striped nightshirt which showed long, thin, white legs – all her magazine attitudes were an attempt to hide an anxiety as deep as his; for her breathing, like his, was loud and shallow.
He was not taken in. The lonely fever in her black eyes, the muscles showing rodlike in the flesh of her upper arm, made him feel how much she wanted him to go; and he thought, sharp because of the sharpness of his need for her: There’s something unhealthy about her, yes … The word caused him guilt. He accepted it, and allowed his mind, which was over-alert, trying to pin down the cause of his misery, to add: Yes, not clean, dirty. But this fresh criticism surprised him, and he remembered her obsessive care of her flesh, hair, nails and the long hours spent in the bath. Yes, dirty, his rising aversion insisted.
Armed by it, he was able to turn, slowly, to look at her direct, instead of through the cold glass. He was a solid, well-set-up, brushed, washed young man who had stood several inches shorter than she at the wedding a month ago; but with confidence in the manhood which had mastered her freakish adolescence. He now kept on her the pressure of a blue stare both appealing (of which he was not aware) and aggressive – which he meant as a warning. Meanwhile he controlled a revulsion which he knew would vanish if she merely lifted her arms towards him.
‘What do you mean, he might?’ he said again.
After some moments of not-answering, she said, languid, turning her thin hand this way and that: ‘I said, he might.’
This dialogue echoed, for both of them, not only from five minutes before; but from other mornings, when it had been as often as not unspoken. They were on the edge of disaster. But the young husband was late. He looked at his watch, a gesture which said, but unconvincingly, bravado merely: I go out to work while you lie there … Then he about-turned, and went to the door, slowing on his way to it. Stopped. Said: ‘Well in that case I shan’t be back to supper.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said, languid. She now lay flat on her back, and waved both hands in front of her eyes to dry nail varnish which, however, was three days old.
He said loudly: ‘Freda! I mean it. I’m not going to …’ He looked both trapped and defiant; but intended to do everything, obviously, to maintain his self-respect, his masculinity, in the face of – but what? Her slow smile across at him was something (unlike everything else she had done since waking that morning) she was quite unaware of. She surely could not be aware of the sheer brutality of her slow, considering, contemptuous smile? For it had invitation in it; and it was this, the unconscious triumph there, that caused him to pale, to begin a stammering: ‘Fre-Fre-Fred-Freda …’ but give up, and leave the room. Abruptly though quietly, considering the force of the horror.
She lay still, listening to his footsteps go down, and the front door closing. Then, without hurrying, she lifted her long thin white legs that ended in ten small pink shields, over the edge of the bed, and stood on them by the window, to watch her husband’s well-brushed head jerking away along the pavement. This was a suburb of London, and he had to get to the City, where he was a clerk-with-prospects: and most of the other people down there were on their way to work. She watched him and them, until at the corner he turned, his face lengthened with anxiety. She indolently waved, without smiling. He stared back as if at a memory of nightmare; so she shrugged and removed herself from the window, and did not see his frantically too-late wave and smile.
She now stood, frowning, in front of the long glass in the new wardrobe: a very tall girl, stooped by her height, all elbows and knees, and even more ridiculous because of the short nightshirt. She stripped this off over her head, taking assurance in a side-glance from full-swinging breasts and a rounded waist; then slipped on a white négligé that had frills all down it and around the neck, from which her head emerged, poised. She now looked much better, like a model, in fact. She brushed her short gleaming black hair, stared at length into the deep anxious eyes, and got back into bed.
Soon she tensed, hearing the front door open, softly; and close, softly again. She listened, as the unseen person also listened and watched; for this was a two-roomed flatlet, converted in a semidetached house. The landlady lived in the flatlet below this one on the ground floor; and the young husband had taken to asking her, casually, every evening, or listening, casually, to easily given information, about the comings and goings in the house and the movements of his wife. But the steps came steadily up towards her, the door opened, very gently, and she looked up, her face bursting into flower as in came a very tall, lank, dark young man. He sat on the bed beside his sister, took her thin hand in his thin hand, kissed it, bit it lovingly, then bent to kiss her on the lips. Their mouths held while two pairs of deep black eyes held each other. Then she shut her eyes, took his lower lip between her teeth, and slid her tongue along it. He began to undress before she let him go; and she asked, without any of the pertness she used for her husband: ‘Are you in a hurry this morning?’
‘Got to get over to a job in Exeter Street.’
An electrician, he was not tied to desk or office.
He slid naked into bed beside his sister, murmuring: ‘Olive Oyl.’
Her long body was pressed against his in a fervour of gratitude for the love name, for it had never received absolution from her husband as it did from this man; and she returned, in as loving a murmur: ‘Popeye.’ Again the two pairs of eyes stared into each other at an inch or so’s distance. His, though deep in bony sockets like hers, were prominent there, the eyeballs rounded under thin, already crinkling, bruised-looking flesh. Hers, however, were delicately outlined by clear white skin, and he kissed the perfected copies of his own ugly eyes, and said, as she pressed towards him: ‘Now, now, Olive Oyl, don’t be in such a hurry, you’ll spoil it.’
‘No, we won’t.’
‘Wait, I tell you.’
‘All right then …’
The two bodies, deeply breathing, remained still a long while. Her hand, on the small of his back, made a soft, circular pressing motion, bringing him inwards. He had his two hands on her hipbones, holding her still. But she succeeded, and they joined, and he said again: ‘Wait now. Lie still.’ They lay absolutely still, eyes closed.
After a while he asked suddenly: ‘Well, did he last night?’
‘Yes.’
His teeth bared against her forehead and he said: ‘I suppose you made him.’
‘Why made him?’
‘You’re a pig.’
‘All right then, how about Alice?’
‘Oh her. Well, she screamed and said: “Stop. Stop.”’
‘Who’s a pig, then?’
She wriggled circularly, and he held her hips still, tenderly murmuring: ‘No, no, no, no.’
Stillness again. In the small bright bedroom, with the suburban sunlight outside, new green curtains blew in, flicking the too-large, too-new furniture, while the long white bodies remained still, mouth to mouth, eyes closed, united by deep soft breaths.
But his breathing deepened; his nails dug into the bones of her hips, he slid his mouth free and said: ‘How about Charlie, then?’
‘He made me scream, too,’ she murmured, licking his throat, eyes closed. This time it was she who held his loins steady, saying: ‘No, no, no, you’ll spoil it’
They lay together, still. A long silence, a long quiet. Then the fluttering curtains roused her, her foot tensed, and she rubbed it delicately up and down his leg. He said, angry: ‘Why did you spoil it then? It was just beginning.’
‘It’s much better afterwards if it’s really difficult.’ She slid and pressed her internal muscles to make it more difficult, grinning at him in challenge, and he put his hands around her throat in a half-mocking, half-serious pressure to stop her, simultaneously moving in and out of her with exactly the same emulous, taunting but solicitous need she was showing – to see how far they both could go. In a moment they were pulling each other’s hair, biting, sinking fingers between thin bones, and then, just before the explosion, they pulled apart at the same moment, and lay separate, trembling.
‘We only just made it,’ he said, fond, uxorious, stroking her hair.
‘Yes. Careful now, Fred.’
They slid together again.
‘Now it will be just perfect,’ she said, content, mouth against his throat.
The two bodies, quivering with strain, lay together, jerking involuntarily from time to time. But slowly they quietened. Their breathing, jagged at first, smoothed. They breathed together. They had become one person, abandoned against and in each other, silent and gone.
A long time, a long time, a long …
A car went past below in the usually silent street, very loud, and the young man opened his eyes and looked into the relaxed gentle face of his sister.
‘Freda.’
‘Ohhh.’
‘Yes, I’ve got to go, it must be nearly dinnertime.’
‘Wait a minute.’
‘No, or we’ll get excited again, we’ll spoil everything.’
They separated gently, but the movements both used, the two hands gentle on each other’s hips, easing their bodies apart, were more like a fitting together. Separate, they lay still, smiling at each other, touching each other’s face with fingertips, licking each other’s eyelids with small cat licks.
‘It gets better and better.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you go this time?’
‘You know.’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘You know. Where you were.’
‘Yes. Tell me.’
‘Can’t.’
‘I know. Tell me.”
‘With you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Are we one person, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
Silence again. Again he roused himself.
‘Where are you working this afternoon?’
‘I told you. It’s a baker’s shop in Exeter Street.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘I’m taking Alice to the pictures.’
She bit her lips, punishing them and him, then sunk her nails into his shoulder.
‘Well my darling, I just make her, that’s all, I make her come, she wouldn’t understand anything better.’
He sat up, began dressing. In a moment he was a tall sober youth in a dark blue sweater. He slicked down his hair with the young husband’s hairbrushes, as if he lived here, while she lay naked, watching.
He turned and smiled, affectionate and possessive, like a husband. There was something in her face, a lost desperation, that made his harden. He crouched beside her, scowling, baring his teeth, gently fitting his thumb on her windpipe, looking straight into her dark eye. She breathed hoarsely, and coughed. He let his thumb drop.
‘What’s that for, Fred?’
‘You swear you don’t do that with Charlie?’
‘How could I?’
‘What do you mean? You could show him.’
‘But why? Why do you think I want to? Fred!’
The two pairs of deep eyes, in bruised flesh, looked lonely with uncertainty into each other.
‘How should I know what you want?’
‘You’re stupid,’ she said suddenly, with a small maternal smile.
He dropped his head, with a breath like a groan, on to her breasts, and she stroked his head gently, looking over it at the wall, blinking tears out of her eyes. She said: ‘He’s not coming home to supper tonight, he’s angry.’
‘Is he?’
‘He keeps talking about you. He asked today if you were coming.’
‘Why, does he guess?’ He jerked his head up off the soft support of her bosom, and stared, his face bitter, into hers. ‘Why? You haven’t been stupid now, have you?’
‘No, but Fred … but after you’ve been with me I suppose I’m different …’
‘Oh Christ!’ He jumped up, desperate, beginning movements of flight, anger, hate, escape – checking each one. ‘What do you want, then? You want me to make you come, then? Well, that’s easy enough, isn’t it, if that’s all you want. All right then, lie down and I’ll do it, and I’ll make you come till you cry, if that’s all …’ He was about to strip off his clothes; but she shot up from the bed, first hastily draping herself in her white frills, out of an instinct to protect what they had. She stood by him, as tall as he, holding his arms down by his sides. ‘Fred, Fred, Fred, darling, my sweetheart, don’t spoil it, don’t spoil it now when …’
‘When what?’
She met his fierce look with courage, saying steadily: ‘Well, what do you expect, Fred? He’s not stupid, is he? I’m not a … he makes love to me, well, he is my husband, isn’t he? And … well, what about you and Alice, you do the same, it’s normal, isn’t it? Perhaps if you and I didn’t have Charlie and Alice for coming, we wouldn’t be able to do it our way, have you thought of that?’
‘Have I thought of that! Well, what do you think?’
‘Well, it’s normal, isn’t it?’
‘Normal,’ he said, with horror, gazing into her loving face for reassurance against the word. ‘Normal, is it? Well, if you’re going to use words like that …’ Tears ran down his face, and she kissed them away in a passion of protective love.
‘Well, why did you say I must marry him? I didn’t want to, you said I should.’
‘I didn’t think it would spoil us.’
‘But it hasn’t, has it, Fred? Nothing could be like us. How could it? You know that from Alice, don’t you, Fred?’ Now she was anxiously seeking for his reassurance. They stared at each other, then their eyes closed, and they laid their cheeks together and wept, holding down each other’s amorous hands, for fear that what they were might be cheapened by her husband, his girl.
He said: ‘What were you beginning to say?’
‘When?’
‘Just now. You said, don’t spoil it now when.’
‘I get scared.’
‘Why?’
‘Suppose I get pregnant? Well, one day I must, it’s only fair, he wants kids. Suppose he leaves me – he gets in the mood to leave me, like today. Well, he feels something … it stands to reason. It doesn’t matter how much I try with him, you know he feels it … Fred?’
