Falling (34 page)

It was a silent place – so quiet that the ticking and buzzing of insects seemed loud. She put her hands behind her neck and leaned her head against the door. Her shirt was fastened just
below the hollow of her throat.

‘We could have brought that poor cat here and buried it.’

‘We didn’t know about this place.’

She shrugged. ‘And we haven’t got a spade with us. I know.’

‘May I kiss you?’

I saw her become unnaturally still. Then, with what seemed almost a gallant attempt at nonchalance, she said, ‘Why not?’

I kissed her for a long time. I did not stop kissing her until I was certain that she wanted me to go on. When I drew away from her I could see from her eyes how little she wanted me to.

I unfastened her shirt until her breasts were exposed. I could see her heart beating beneath the white satin and lace that enclosed them and when I took a nipple between two fingers it was at
once erect. Very slowly, and watching her, I slipped a shoulder strap from her shoulder and released her breast. Her eyes were fastened upon mine with a passionate intensity: she was no longer
afraid; she wanted me to touch her too much to care about fear. I don’t think that anything turns me on more than getting a woman into this condition. I love it, and love too the delay that I
can then impose for as long as I care to. A certain amount of frustration can be invaluable in the long run, and Daisy, although she did not, I think, know it, had a long way to go yet. Now, I put
my mouth on her breast and as I began to suck her, she shuddered and made a sound denoting exquisite pleasure. I stopped almost at once. Her head was turned to one side and her eyes were shut. She
looked bereft and I could see that she was about to speak, so I put my fingers over her mouth, and said, ‘I adore you.’

Then I returned her breast to its lacy prison and fastened her shirt.

‘Is it really ten years since anyone made love to you?’

‘I expect I’m behaving like a starved spinster.’ She tried to smile and I saw that her pride had been touched. I had been kneeling by her and now I took her in my arms for a
reassuring unsexual cuddle. I put her head against my shoulder and stroked her lovely hair and crooned, ‘“Daisy, Daisy, I’m half crazy, all for the love of you. It won’t be
a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage, but you’ll look sweet—”‘

She lifted her head and looked at me, half smiling. ‘I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone – ever again.’

Oh, I thought. I might have known that there would be rocks ahead. I smiled back. ‘Darling, it’s only a song. I don’t know why it came into my head. Shall we go home and get
some tea? After all this sun I must do the watering.’

So we went back to the car, and thence to the cottage, and then I drew a plan for her of the additional room that she wanted. I am good at that sort of thing, having had to do it for gardens.
She wanted a double room with a bathroom leading off it, and I suggested that while she was about it, she might add a small room for the washing-machine (which had been ordered) and a deep freeze
so that less shopping would be needed. She got quite excited at the plans. Did I think she would have to get permission to carry them out, and how much did I think it would cost?

I thought it unlikely that the cottage was listed and therefore if she did need permission it would almost certainly be granted. As to the cost, I read somewhere that each room added to a house
cost about ten thousand pounds, and this was more than that.

‘Fifteen thousand?’ I said this as much to see whether she was fazed by such a sum as to encourage her to think that I knew about such things. She did not seem surprised by the cost.
‘But we can get an estimate,’ she said.

It was a beautiful evening. She cooked supper while I watered the garden. It had not rained at all for nearly two weeks, and the new roses and other shrubs were suffering, as the soil was light
and drained very quickly. I picked her a small bunch of roses, but when I went into the cottage – full of the delicious aroma of tomato and garlic – I heard the bath water running. I
had bought myself a bottle of vodka the day we went shopping and now I decanted it into an empty Perrier water bottle. Drinking wine every evening had the effect of making me crave a real drink,
but I did not want her to be in a position to monitor me about how much. So I gave myself a hefty swig then took the bottle up to my bedroom where it could be safely concealed by my winter jersey.
Then I sat on my bed and wrote her a little note, which I took downstairs to put beside the roses. The telephone rang – a most unwelcome interruption. By the time I picked up the receiver in
the sitting room, Daisy had reached the one in her bedroom.

A man’s voice was saying, ‘Daisy? I gather you rang me.’

It was too late now to put the receiver down without it being noticed, so I listened – poised to replace it at the precise moment that Daisy rang off.

‘Oh, Edwin. Thank you for calling. I was trying to get hold of Katya, but she always seems to be out. Is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, as far as I know. She’s gone off for a fortnight’s holiday.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know.’

‘France. With one of her university friends. She was getting rather fed up because I couldn’t find a locum until September and she needed a change. I thought she would have told
you.’

‘What about the children?’

‘They’re both at school, and of course Thomas is away so there’s only Caroline. My sister has come to look after her – came yesterday, in fact, so all is well.’

‘Is Caroline there?’

‘She’s out with her pony, I’m afraid. But I could get her to call you later, if you like.’

‘Only if she feels like it.’

They went on and on. I sensed that in reality they had very little to say to one another and were struggling with the tedium of abstract goodwill, which made them both dull. When they finally
reached the reiteration that Katya – away for a fortnight – would be back on Saturday week, and that Caroline was not to ring her grandmother unless she felt like it, they were able to
exchange farewells. I replaced the receiver with exact timing, and some anxiety. It was plain to me that I had a limited time marooned, as it were, with Daisy, before outsiders, in the shape of her
friends and family, presented themselves. Alone with Daisy, I had only her to consider, to please, to interest. With other company I might face a critical, likely hostile audience that would
certainly cramp my style. I knew now that she wanted me in bed; she had also to fall in love with me before I could count on her to defend and champion me against outsiders.

When Daisy came down, I was opening a bottle of red wine. She was wearing a long cotton – I don’t know whether it was a dress or a robe – garment of soft raspberry pink, with a
low rounded neckline and wide but very short sleeves that made her thin white arms seem even more delicate. I told her how lovely she looked, put my arms round her, kissed her forehead and –
very lightly – her mouth, and told her how much I loved her. ‘I hope I don’t say that too often.’

‘Oh, no!’ There was a second’s pause, and then she said, ‘It’s very nice to be loved.’ I gave her the roses with their stalks wrapped in the note. ‘I
hadn’t seen you for some time, so I had to write.’

She read it with a little smile curling her mouth. She seemed altogether lighter, gayer, than I had ever seen her. All the evening she sparkled, she glowed – she was conscious of my
admiration and she loved it. After supper she produced the remains of a bottle of a Turkish liqueur. ‘It’s called
ghul;
it tastes of roses.’

It was too sweet for me, but I loved to drink it with her. She told me all about the telephone call that I had heard, and said that she was worried that Katya was not happy, and more worried
that she would not confide it if she were.

‘I have not been a good mother. And she really didn’t have a father.’

‘Bedtime story,’ I said. ‘I propose that each night we take turns to tell a story of our life and, as it is my idea, I choose that you go first.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘I’ll tell you when we are in bed. If I may share your bed?’

‘You may.’ She did not look at me. Bed meant sex, and the idea of sex still frightened her.

So I was very careful, very gentle, full of homage to her beauty and care for her comfort. I made no attempt to arouse her. I wanted her to feel safe with me, to recognize that I was unlike
other men she had known and to love me for it. I could feel that I was succeeding in this; her eyes when they met mine, now rested on me with a softness, a frankness that betokened, at the very
least, affection.

When we were propped up in her bed (I had brought my pillows to augment hers), I said, ‘I should like it if you would tell me about Katya’s father. Was he the first man in your
life?’

She told me – a mixture of things that I already knew and things that I did not. She said his being Polish had meant, in a way, that she had not expected to understand him. So she would
make all kinds of assumptions ranging from what she felt was due to a battle-scarred hero, to his meaning every word that he said to her. ‘And, of course, I was terribly flattered that he
liked me.’

‘He must have felt rather more than liking.’

‘He said he adored me,’ she said sadly. ‘But, again, he was given to superlatives. The things he didn’t talk much about were true – and the things he talked about
all the time mostly were not. For instance,’ she said a moment later, ‘he never talked about his life as a pilot. But he was apparently amazingly brave. He got his plane back on one
occasion with one engine blazing, and landed it and when they got him out, just before it blew up, they realized his neck was broken. He never told me, and he never complained of all the ghastly
pain he had ever after. He never talked about his family until after Katya was born, and when he did, I realized how desperate he must always have felt about not knowing, and then knowing what had
happened to them. He talked a lot about how richhe would become, but his jobs never lasted and he was hopeless with money. And, of course, other things.’

‘It must have been awful for you if you loved him. Did you? Was he a good lover?’

‘Of course I thought I did – which is nearly the same thing to begin with; it’s only later that you see it wasn’t. I was flattered by so much intense attention. I was
nineteen and I’d led a very quiet life with Jess – she was my aunt who brought me up.’ She fell silent again.

I took her hand and held it.

‘But then, you see, it became clear that he didn’t love me – any more than he loved a good many other women he met. We were all the same to him. A distraction. I think he
regarded most of his life as a game, a gamble whose risks he got attached to. When he wasn’t playing at being madly in love with someone, he played at being a husband and father.’

I was pretty certain of the answer, but I needed to know for sure.

‘But when he
was
being a husband, was it good for you?’

She had withdrawn her hand, and now she drew up her knees and put her arms round them.

‘Oh, I suppose the first time one does something quiet and private with someone, you don’t really know. You don’t know what it’s
meant
to be like. So you sort of
– string along with it. Or you think if you aren’t – weren’t – enjoying it, it’s something wrong with
you.
Sometimes I just felt that I was failing him,
and that was probably why he went off with other people. And there was nobody to talk to, of course.’

‘Your aunt?’

For the first time she smiled. ‘Jess! Oh, no. Jess always said that she knew nothing about sex because it had never interested her. She had inherited me, and that was marvellous, because
she’d always wanted to be a mother. And when I asked her what she thought about my marrying Stach, she said, “You know best, dear, but always remember that that may not be much.”
She adored Katya – simply loved her. And she took us both back when I left Stach.’

‘Do you ever see him?’

‘Not any more. The last time was when Katya got married. By then, she didn’t even want him to come. She’d been through everything about him – missing him, getting her
friends to be sorry for her because he wasn’t there, visiting him in his flat in Ealing, which always contained a strange, different woman every time she went. In the end, she didn’t
want to go – or see him at all. But for years and years and years she resented me for leaving him.’

There was a long silence.

‘And then Jess died. Everything was much worse after that.’

I was looking at her face, so close to mine, seeing that the skin beneath her eyes had become transparent as it did when she was tired – and that she was brimming with tears. ‘She
loved me and I loved her so much. It was really
equal
love. I suppose everybody wants that?’

‘Sure they do.’ I took her in my arms. ‘You’re tired out, darling. You need sleep.’

I rocked and soothed and comforted her until she lay back on her pillow with her hand in mine, shut her eyes and – like a child – immediately slept. I lay and watched her for some
time. It was clear that her aunt mattered far more to her than that first husband and I wondered how on earth anyone could be more upset about an old woman than anyone else. It was beyond me, and
because it was that, it left me cold, but discomforted. Yet I too was short of sleep. I turned out the lamp.

In the early morning, when it was just light, I made more love to her – much as I had the previous afternoon, but this time for far longer. I did everything to her except take her. My
experience of virgins came in handy here. I knew that penetration, after so long an abstinence and the age that she was, might easily be painful and I did not want to hurt her. I wanted her to be
frantic for me (which was easy), and for her to know that I was as much aroused (more difficult), but I had only to imagine taking her by force – pain or no pain – to get an erection.
My abstinence I intended her to interpret as my extreme love for her, and this was entirely successful; indeed, I had every kind of success and it was a sweet triumph to see her at ease, looking up
at me with a kind of grateful radiance. I told her that she was beautiful and that I loved her (one cannot do this too often), and she answered that I made her
feel
beautiful. I knew then
that I had accomplished much; was more than half-way to her becoming mine.