Peach (30 page)

Noel listened, fascinated. His eyes had never been the subject of such a close scrutiny before.

“And your mouth,” she said dropping her finger to his lips, “strong and firm—that’s a passionate mouth, Noel Maddox.” She lifted the cigarette to her lips and drew on it,
then she offered it to him. Noel didn’t smoke but he took it because it had touched her lips. It tasted of her pink lipstick.

Jeannie sipped her wine and he finished his beer in one enormous swallow.

Jeannie laughed. “Well,” she said, “I’ve told you all about me. Let’s talk about you now. All I know is your name and you’re twenty years old.”

Noel stared at her, a feeling of panic creeping over him. What would she say if she knew he were only eighteen? What would he tell her? What did she want to know? She’d prattled on about her home in Grosse Pointe, told him about her father who was a president of an internationally known stockbroker’s, about her mother’s horses and her sister who’d left Mt Holyoke and got married last year to this great guy who was going to be a fantastic neurosurgeon one day. They had a summer cottage at Martha’s Vineyard and in the vacation she sailed and swam and got a great tan.

“There’s nothing to tell,” he murmured, looking down into his empty glass. “My parents are dead. I’ve always been alone.”

Jeannie stared at him, her smiling chatter stilled. “Oh Noel, I’m so sorry.”

Noel shrugged. “That’s okay.”

She took his hand across the table. “Then that’s why you keep to yourself, you’re still hurt because of … was it an accident, Noel?”

He nodded.

“And that’s why you have to work so hard—because you’re all alone.” She squeezed his hand sympathetically. “Now I know what that look is in your eyes, when they are shadowy and remote. You must be thinking of
them.”

Noel avoided her eyes, glancing around the crowded café.

“Let’s go,” she said suddenly, “I feel like walking.”

Outside the pizza place Jeannie kissed him very lightly on
the mouth. She took his hand as they walked back through the streets of Ann Arbor and in a shadowy corner she put her arms around him and pressed herself close. “Kiss me properly,” she commanded.

It wasn’t as difficult as he had expected, kissing a girl. Somehow his face fitted against hers; and his mouth searched for her lips. They felt soft against his and warm. When she opened her mouth for him his tongue found her instinctively and he pulled her closer, wrapping her against him, lost in his passion.

She could feel his erection, of course, and normally she wouldn’t have let a guy get this far on a first date, but there was something about Noel Maddox, a hungriness. It was a dangerous kind of appeal.

She pulled away finally, smoothing her bruised lips with fingers that trembled. Noel stepped back from her. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Jeannie smiled, fumbling for her cigarettes. “That’s okay,” she said lightly, “I liked it.”

Noel stood rigidly, watching her. If he moved he might not be able to control himself, he could still feel the pressure of her small breasts against him, the curve of her stomach and the way she’d opened her legs slightly so that his erection rubbed against her. God, he couldn’t stand it! Jamming his hands in his pockets he stared at the ground.

“I’d better get back,” said Jeannie. “Call me tomorrow, Noel.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek and was gone. A trace of her flowery perfume mingled with the cigarette smoke in the cool night air. He waited until she had disappeared into the house and then he began to walk, then his step quickened into a jog. Noel jogged through the darkened campus until he came to the track and then he began to run, round and round on the cinder track, running
until he was exhausted and there was no energy left for passion.

Noel couldn’t figure out what Jeannie saw in him. He hadn’t called her because he couldn’t afford to take her out again. So she’d called him. He’d never had a telephone call before and when the guy down the hall yelled his name he’d been astonished. “Hi,” Jeannie said, “don’t you like me any more?”

He met her and they sat for a couple of hours over a beer just talking—or rather she talked. She talked about herself and about him, embroidering his meagre story with a romance of her own imagination, the lost loving parents, no family to help him. And she really liked his eyes.

They met several times after that but she insisted they go dutch because it wasn’t fair he should pay for her. Noel couldn’t even afford to pay for himself, he was using money allocated for important things, like books—but he told himself he’d get two jobs in the summer break to make up for it. And he wasn’t spending as much time studying as he should, even when he wasn’t with her he was dreaming about her.

They kissed a lot, in a booth in the café, or behind the cafeteria, or in a hallway. In the darkened movie theatre she took his hand and placed it on her breast. He could feel her breathing, feel the tautness of her nipple under his fingers through the blouse. As if driven by some compelling force he bent his head and kissed it. Jeannie moaned softly and pushed him away.

They began to see each other every night; even when he was studying in the library she would come with her books and take a seat next to him and their eyes would meet, longingly. Her friends were astonished by her behaviour.
“Remember it was a
joke
, Jeannie,” they exclaimed,
“Noel Maddox was just a joke.”

“You don’t know him,” she replied, her eyes fevered with the remembered contact of his mouth on hers. “You don’t know what he’s
really
like.”

They eyed her doubtfully. Noel Maddox was alien, rough. Jeannie shouldn’t be going out with him, she didn’t know what she was getting into. You couldn’t tell with a guy like that, nobody knew anything about him. And her father would go crazy if he knew!

It was six weeks after they met that Jeannie told him that some friends who had an apartment off campus were going away for the weekend—to the big football game at Harvard. “Come on over,” she said casually, “I’ll get some wine and we’ll have supper.”

She was wearing a flowery skirt and white silk shirt with nothing on underneath it and Noel couldn’t take his eyes from the hard points of her breasts beneath the smooth fabric. They drank red wine and talked nervously. She offered him cheese on a wooden board and he recognised the kind he’d made sandwiches with when he’d run away from Scott’s apartment. But he didn’t run this time, though in her own way Jeannie was as dangerous as Scott, because he wanted her, desperately.

The light faded outside the windows to a dusky blue-grey and Jeannie lit a candle in the wax-encrusted Chianti bottle and drew the curtains. It seemed as if he were seeing her in slow motion when she knelt before him and unbuttoned her blouse, sliding it over her shoulders, waiting. The pearl necklet gleamed against the warmer tones of her skin and candlelight gilded her breasts. His hands found them and she leaned back, gasping as his lips closed over her hard
little nipples. He never wanted to leave them, he wanted to lick them, nuzzle them, bite them.

Jeannie pushed him away and their eyes met. Without removing her gaze from his she got to her feet and slowly removed her skirt. She stood for a minute, tall and slender in her white panties and then she unbuttoned his shirt. Running her hands over his chest she bent and bit his nipple. Noel felt a shudder run through him. Her hands fluttered at his belt, and then on the buttons. Her eyes fastened on the bulge in his underpants. Then she was in his arms and they were lying on the rug together in the candlelight. His face was buried in her fragrant hair while his hands explored her body. She was soft, smooth, damp. He was consumed with the need to taste her, and she trembled and leapt under his urgent tongue. It was too much, too much … he had to have her. He pressed himself against her, seeking entry …

“No,” she gasped, “no …”

His fingers found her, opened her … “No,” she cried, “Noel, don’t … I can’t …”

Noel lifted his eyes and stared at her, bewildered.

“Here,” she said taking him in her hand, “here, like this.” His eyes burned into hers as he came.

Jeannie couldn’t keep away from him. Her friends had taken to getting her alone and giving her earnest little lectures on Noel’s unsuitability and how her parents wouldn’t like it, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t help it. She
had
to see him. She spent hours locating people whose apartments would be free for a night or even a whole weekend and she would buy some wine and cheese and light the candles and wait for him, until whatever hour he’d finish work. The transformation when Noel shed his cheap old clothes and stood naked in front of her was startling.

“All men are equal,” she said to him once, “in God’s
eyes. But Noel Maddox, without your clothes, you are a king.”

His lithe strong body tempted her, and the touch of his hands and mouth became more dangerous. He wanted her so badly, so very badly. Jeannie gave in, moaning her pleasure as he entered her.

Afterwards, they lay side by side, not touching, aware of each other’s still-rapid breathing. There was a silken glaze of sweat on his chest and she put out a hand to touch it. Noel leaned over her, gazing intently into her eyes, not speaking.

“You did that
then,”
she said, touching his lids, “you looked at me like that!”

He kissed her gently. “I love you, Noel,” she murmured as he kissed her again.

Very few people knew about their affair. Her friends, worrying about her reputation, covered for her. But Jeannie was a very pretty, very popular girl and she was missed at the parties and football games.

“You’re missing all the fun,” the friends protested.

“Am I?” she would answer dreamily.

At the end of the fall semester Noel’s grades dropped drastically. He had never before had anything but an A. He stared angrily at the paper with the scatter of B’s and C’s. He’d been neglecting his studies because of Jeannie. He’d kept up with all his campus jobs because he had to have the money—but the
real work
had suffered. For the first time in four years he was behind his goal. Jeannie had wanted him to meet her in the vacation but he had told her truthfully that he had to work. He was going back on the assembly line during the day and working a shift at a bar at night. It was as good a time as any for making the break.

When they returned to college she called him on the phone and said, “Hi, let’s meet.” He walked along beside
her, kicking at the ice along the path, avoiding her gaze. “You didn’t call,” she said taking his hand. “I missed you.”

“Yeah,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Me too.”

“Noel,” she pleaded, “what’s wrong?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing. I guess I’m just too busy that’s all.”

Jeannie just stood there, fighting the tears and said, “You don’t want me any more.”

Her blonde hair swung in the wind and her face was pale. “I need to work Jeannie,” he replied stonily.

“I thought I knew you,” she said, tears clouding her bewildered blue eyes.

“You
don’t
know me, Jeannie, not the
real
me.
The real me doesn’t exist. Yet!”

“Damn,” she cried. “Oh damn,” and she took off down the path, blonde hair flying, skidding a little on the ice.

Noel watched, eyes hooded and remote, until she disappeared and then he went back to his room and his studies. Work would always have priority. But Jeannie never knew how desperately he missed her. He was lonelier now than he’d ever been before in his life.

Pale sunlight filtered through the chestnut trees fringing Launceton Hall’s south lawn, dappling Peach’s upturned face and long outstretched legs with a shifting mosaic of
colour. The lawn stretched smooth as striped velvet to distant rose gardens and terraces and beyond them the house.

Launceton Hall had been built in the reign of Queen Anne by Sir Edward Launceton, the third baronet. Tucked into a fold of the verdant Wiltshire hills its rosy brickwork glowed against the green of the park that had been laid out by Capability Brown. There was a fine avenue of elms and a series of silvery cascades tumbling down the hillside into a lake, spanned at its narrowest point by a bridge copied from a Chinese porcelain plate; a Grecian “folly” surmounted the slope overlooking the eastern bank affording spectacular views of the house at the sunset.

Launceton Hall’s many windows were flung wide to the afternoon sunshine and its lawns were dotted with summery figures drifting towards the tea-tent. White-flannelled cricketers made their way thankfully from the pitch amid a spatter of applause and small children shrieked and laughed, spilling lemonade on the grass, while overheated dogs slobbered anxiously for forgotten morsels of cake. In the shade of the ancient chestnuts the Launceton Magna Silver Band, red-faced beneath their smart peaked caps, perched on tiny metal chairs, puffing jovial Gilbert and Sullivan melodies into the warm blue English afternoon.

Peach lounged in a deck-chair, her eyes half-closed, her bare toes curling into the cool, infinitely green grass. It was the perfect English scene—and perfectly boring. She’d come here today with Melinda and Mrs Seymour, hoping that she might see Tom, but he was away at Cambridge. When Melinda had invited Peach to stay she had made English country life sound so enticing. Peach had envisaged morning strolls through fronded woods with perfectly trained dogs running at heel, and afternoon tea and crumpets in front of blazing log fires, and maybe long summer evenings in the romantic green English half-light where she would meet
some handsome and romantic Englishman. It hadn’t turned out quite like that. Unless you were dedicated to horse-riding, besotted by badly behaved dogs and adored life in damp, sprawling, vaguely shabby country houses that hadn’t felt the winds of change for at least a century, then country life was not for you.