‘Stand still,’ he ordered. ‘I want to undress you.’
I realized only afterwards how prominent in his mind was the thought that he was the first person to do this. I waited, my legs unsteady with longing for him. Both of us were breathing fast, shallow breaths. Douglas’s physical presence had always had a strong effect on me and now I could allow those feelings to be satisfied. He slipped off my wool dress, slip, stockings, camisole and the rest of my underwear, his hands trembling as he loosed my breasts. Without giving me the chance to do the same for him, he began to tear off his own clothes, struggling impatiently with his tie and collar studs. He turned his back to me as he removed the last of his clothes. I had never seen him naked before. Shivering, I looked at the broad top half of his body, the strong straight back. His legs were very white, the bad one slightly thinner than the other. He turned, very bashful suddenly, braving both the exposure of his leg and his obvious arousal. At first he couldn’t look at me, as if he was afraid that having seen, I would reject him.
But I wanted him for everything he was. ‘Come here,’ I said. ‘Please.’
His hands flickered over my body, lightly, then with more firmness and confidence. He stood back from me a little, not allowing the lower part of his body to touch me. His hands moved over my breasts, waist, back, and then, as if he could no longer resist, his fingers stroked quickly between my legs. I responded, moving my hips forward, eyes closed.
‘My God,’ he cried. His voice was harsh and loud.
I opened my eyes. ‘Sssh. People will hear you. Whatever’s the matter?’
His face wore an incensed, cheated expression, lips tightening. ‘You know exactly what you’re doing! You’re not a virgin are you?’
Half stunned, I looked into his livid face. ‘No.’
He turned abruptly and limped towards the window. ‘You’ve made a proper fool of me. I should have seen it that day in the garden. You’d have had all your clothes off if I’d let you. I might have known – just like her.’ There was a bitter conviction in his voice.
‘Who?’ I was bewildered. I folded my arms across my goosepimpled breasts, shivering now from the cold.
‘My dear sweet mother.’ He was silent for a moment, then spoke very fast, his back to me.
‘Go with anything she would. Almost, anyway. D’you really think she was faithful to my exhumed mummy of a father? There were a number of them on and off as I grew up. After all, she was lovely, wasn’t she? Sympathy and intimacy were what she wanted. And the young men with their tight skin and vigorous bodies wanted her for her hips and breasts, those eyes, for the sparkling life she gave off. And they made her laugh and stay young. I had to lie for her sometimes and I found out how easily it comes. He always knew, of course. But they didn’t stop needing each other. That’s the power they’ve always had over one another – the dependence – each afraid of losing the other’s love. The more he withdrew, the harder she tried for him. It was poison – the house was full of unspoken rage all the time. And I moved between them like a symbol of their warped marriage.’ His voice began to break up. ‘She doesn’t know who she is. She’s a child, a butterfly, a whore . . .’ He controlled himself. I stood waiting, frozen.
‘You went with . . .?’
‘Angus. Yes.’
‘I thought your relationship with him was innocent.’ He seemed to force out the words.
‘Douglas – ’ I went closer to him, finding it unbearable talking in this distant way. ‘You didn’t ask. It’s not something I could just come out with easily. I loved Angus. And of course, the war . . . We lived from day to day. Every time he came home on leave we knew we might never see each other again. And the last time we happened to be right. If it hadn’t been for the war it would have been different.’
‘You’d be married to him, wouldn’t you?’ Douglas asked miserably.
‘Most likely.’ I kept my voice gentle. ‘But there’s no point in thinking like that. Angus is dead, Douglas. It’s you I’m married to. You can’t go through our marriage being jealous of a ghost. It’s absurd.’
‘A woman should be a virgin on her wedding night,’ he said peevishly. ‘It’s what a man expects.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I put out my hand and touched the top of his arm. He didn’t shake me off. ‘There’s nothing can be done now. All I can say is, it’s you I want.’
He turned and looked at me hard then, his blue eyes searching mine with frightening intensity. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’
The question grated on me. ‘You can’t know. That’s what trust is about. I shan’t be unfaithful to you.’
We were both very cold and I took his hand and led him to the bed where we got in under the covers. The shock of the sheets made us shudder. I put my arms round him. This was someone I wasn’t used to, this weak, exposed Douglas, deeply insecure. After a moment he laid his head on my chest and I moved my body closer to him.
‘That’s right,’ he said, his sarcasm less wholehearted now. ‘Throw yourself at me.’
Silently I stroked him with my hand until we were both warmer. He began to move his face against my skin.
‘Katie – I want us to be together so much.’
And he began touching me very fast, almost perfunctorily; breasts, stomach, thighs and momentarily between my legs, removing his hand with a jerk as if I’d bitten him. His face was tense.
‘It’s all right,’ I reassured him. I raised my head and pulled him to me, kissing him, trying to inject some warmth into our lovemaking when all I could find was a hurried kind of desperation as if he wanted it over.
His movements became urgent suddenly. He tried to climb on top of me but got caught up in the sheet and had to kneel up to free himself.
‘Lie back,’ he ordered abruptly.
He flung himself on me. ‘Quickly – for God’s sake.’ He was too high, against my stomach and I arched my body under him. But he lay very still suddenly. His face creased, agonized, hands gripping the pillow behind my head.
‘No.’ Now he was almost sobbing. ‘No, no.’ He sank his head down beside me and gave a sigh which I felt right through his body. Gradually I felt the wetness between us. He began to shake and I knew he was crying.
Eventually, raising his head a little he said, ‘I couldn’t have deflowered you anyway, could I?’
We lay there for a long time and I stroked him like a child. He was too deep in his own feelings to notice the tears on my face.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ I whispered. ‘We’ve got the rest of our lives for this, haven’t we? It’ll get better.’
It might have got better had things been different. Had it not been for Olivia.
In May, the Kemps sent her away.
‘So where is she?’ I demanded of Elizabeth.
‘She’s having a spell in hospital.’ She had invited me in, but we remained standing in that bleached, fussy drawing-room. She fiddled with a silver cigarette case, turning it round and round in her hands.
I had re-established more contact with the Kemps over the past months, especially seeing the state Livy was in. I felt for them, disturbed as they were by her depressed listlessness interspersed with loud, over-excited behaviour. But now I could feel my civility slipping fast.
‘Where?’ I asked. ‘I’ll go and see her.’
‘It’s not that kind of hospital.’
‘What d’you mean?’ I was afraid of her answer.
She couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘She’s in All Saints.’
All Saints, the mental hospital on the north side of the city. Part of an old, forbidding complex of institutions: asylum, prison, workhouse, shoulder to shoulder, only separated from each other by high brick walls.
‘My God!’ I was horrified. ‘Why? I mean I know she’s seemed very overwrought at times, but surely things weren’t that bad?’
Speaking in a whisper, Elizabeth said, ‘We didn’t know what else to do. You’ve only seen a little of what she’s been like. Her behaviour has been horrible. I can hardly bear to think of it. She’s been going with men like a . . .’ She wrung her hands. ‘Alec felt he’d lost control of her. Just a little spell in there, he said, to bring her back to her senses.’ She began to sob quietly, her shoulders heaving.
‘Alec says, Alec says,’ I stormed at her. ‘Don’t you ever think or say anything for yourself, you pathetic woman? Or at least for your own daughter? He’s not God, he’s just a man, and a pretty unprincipled one at that.’
‘It’s not his fault,’ she cried, gulping and sobbing. ‘It’s all my fault. I am a pathetic woman. I am!’
‘What is the
matter
with you?’ I was inflamed, unable to see anything but my fury. ‘Don’t you realize how difficult it is to get someone released from a mental institution once you’ve had them certified? And you have, I take it?’
Elizabeth crumpled. I found myself looking down on the pins in her blond pleat of hair as she knelt in front of me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know that. Help me, Katie. You’re so strong. As strong as he is. Help me. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Help you?’ I blazed at her. ‘Why should I help
you
? But I’ll do whatever it takes to help Olivia. And damn the pair of you – damn you!’
I turned and left her kneeling with her beautifully coiffured head pressed to the floor, weeping with harsh, broken sounds. My feeling at the time was that it served her right.
But I also shared with her a terrible sense of guilt. I’d seen for myself that things were not right with Livy and had done nothing. I was preoccupied with my own concerns, and also I simply didn’t know what to do. She had needed help – perhaps for a lot longer than I realized – and I hadn’t responded. What sort of friend could I call myself?
* * *
OLIVIA
Other people can love. Katie loves, but I have not learned how. She cries when babies are born. I think that’s a kind of love. She cares for other people’s children. But I have never been able to make things turn out right. Everything I touch curdles. I am like brown spots on apples or the monster skulking under the stairs.
My initial training in the WRNS is at Mill Hill. The Wren officer who interviews me looks as if she is in the wrong place, as if she has just stepped out of her kitchen fresh from bottling fruit.
She asks, ‘What were you up to before the war?’
‘I was a pianist.’ The words stride out of my mouth. I want it to be true. It ought to be true.
She frowns at my forms. ‘It says here you have secretarial qualifications.’
We all hear this regulation: we are to ‘be amenable to naval discipline and put service before family ties’. To me this is beautiful, a kind of psalm. I want it in embossed silver letters across my wall. It makes my life feel narrow and simplified like a nun’s. I am free.
I hope freedom will make me clean. I can be a child and begin again. Like any child I need love.
My first job is at Southampton. I am Personal Assistant and shorthand typist for—. I don’t want to give his rank or write his full name. People can make things out of anything. His wife lives inland in Hampshire. He is Peter. Just Peter. He is strong and lean with a face lined beyond his years, possibly by sea and weather. His nose is large, with character and authority. He has strong, square nails and I watch his hands move over paper, reach for pens, lift the telephone receiver. After days, only, alone in that small square office I know his eyes are on my hands, on my curved body, his eyes piercing me when he believes my attention is away from him. We match each other in our dark blue uniforms. I know we must touch, skin on skin.
I wait a long time because this is different. It hurts me, is fish hooks under my skin. With others it is I who decide, who take charge, because it is nothing. With Peter I am paralysed, cannot flaunt, at times can barely speak. I watch him work so hard. He is very tired and I want to comfort him. The air takes on life between us.
We are forever working late. When it happens he pushes his chair back in a rush and stands behind mine. My hands move like machines on the typewriter until I am trembling too much. My breaths are thin as wafers. My body feels scraped raw, waiting for his touch. I have never felt this before, so tilted and falling.
He says, ‘I can’t get through another day without touching you.’
It is not skin on skin because there’s no time. It’s buttons and layers of clothes and a hard floor. I no longer know what I am doing. I have not known I could want a man, that my body could cry out and hurt until it’s losing me, leaving me behind. I hear myself moaning and my teeth are biting into stiff cloth and flesh and hair and the room is rocking and my head crashes back and forth and more words spill out of my mouth as he does it to me and I am there and not there.
When everything slows and the room is still he’s climbing away from my body, fast. He says ‘Christ’, and his voice is small and frightened. When our clothes are straightened out he is giving me looks across the room from the sides of his eyes. My face is bleeding.
He has me moved to another office. I know it’s his way of showing remorse because of that cold wife. He never talks about her but I know she’s cold like cod on a slab. I don’t take it personally. Liaisons of that kind are naturally frowned on in the forces. I leave some time before seeking him out. Then I think he needs encouraging, that he might be afraid he’s hurt my feelings.
I telephone then, every day. Of course the new secretary answers. She says, ‘Peter’ (she doesn’t actually say Peter of course) ‘is not able to speak to you at present.’
And I say, in my best Wren voice, ‘Perhaps you could tell him it’s a matter of the utmost urgency?’
I try to see him, but he is never alone, and is colder than the winter sea. The nose takes on a look of cruelty. I write. I wait outside his quarters. His face looms in my sleep. Eventually I go to his office, in tears, though I haven’t meant to cry. The secretary is still there, blond, trim and impassable as a shield for him. Following that they move me away from Southampton.
Since that I have been with men a lot. Anyone’s. Everyone’s. Other Wrens won’t speak to me. Officers’ groundsheet, and not just officers. It’s something I can do well, when I don’t care for them at all. There’s a comfort in a man’s body, but I am playing it, I never lose myself. I am supreme for those moments. I’m queen, jewelled with ice and thorns.