Reckless (18 page)

They strolled together up and down the towpath, aware that the men’s eyes were following them. Pamela asked Christine how she came to know Stephen, and so learned that she had once worked as a showgirl at Murray’s club.

‘Were you a dancer?’

‘Oh, no, I can’t dance,’ said Christine. ‘I was one of the girls who just stands there. I can do standing still.’

Standing still naked, thought Pamela. All the men’s eyes lingering over your body.

‘Did you like it?’

‘It was all right. It gets boring very quickly, I can tell you. Perce pays well, nine pounds a week. But really it’s a chance to meet people, isn’t it?’

A chance to meet people. What she meant was that men stared at your naked body and desired you, and later you went out with them.

‘Is Stephen your boyfriend?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Christine. ‘Stephen’s no bother at all in that way.’

‘Oh,’ said Pamela.

She wondered if this meant that Stephen was homosexual. Christine evidently followed her thoughts.

‘He’s not queer or anything,’ she said. ‘He has this great story about when he was young and visiting Mexico. He and a friend went to a brothel and they picked a girl each, and Stephen went off into one of the rooms with his girl. Then she came running out to bang on all the other girls’ doors, shouting out, “Come and see Stephen’s
pinga grande
!”’

‘Good heavens!’

‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Christine. ‘He’s got a whopper.’

Pamela smiled, as if such talk were familiar to her, but everything about Christine was a revelation. She was presumably what is referred to as a ‘loose woman’, but there was nothing sordid about her. She was pretty and friendly, funny and honest. It was quite plain that all the men adored her.

‘So do you have a boyfriend?’ Pamela asked her.

‘I think I’ve got several,’ said Christine. ‘Or maybe none. How about you?’

‘Definitely none.’

A car drove up bringing a chauffeur with a note from Bill Astor.

‘Who’s for a swim?’ said Stephen. ‘Bill says I’m to bring some amusing people up to his pool.’

They piled into the cars and drove through the woods to the biggest house Pamela had ever seen. The car deposited them by a door in a high brick wall, to the right of the palace. Here, set in a walled garden between lines of dark-green hedge, was a blue swimming pool. Conical yew trees stood at each corner, and at the far end there was a pillared circular pavilion.

Pamela had not come prepared with a costume, and so assumed she would be among those who watched from the side. But all the others stripped to their underwear and jumped in.

For a while she stood on the side feeling like a child who couldn’t swim, which wasn’t fair because she was a good swimmer. So when Christine called to her, ‘Come on in, it’s not cold!’ she slipped off her dress and joined them.

The water was cold, at first at least, and rather shocked her. Then Eugene came up behind her and clasped his powerful arms round her and lifted her up out of the water. She screamed and he dropped her. André emerged from the water before her, sleek as a seal, and gazed at her for a moment. Then he slipped underwater again.

A group of men in dinner jackets appeared on the poolside. Pamela failed to catch who any of them were, except for the stout figure of their host, Lord Astor. They were all middle-aged or older. They gazed with smiling longing at herself and Christine. Christine climbed out of the pool in her brassiere and knickers and talked to them as unselfconsciously as if she was fully dressed. Pamela too got out, and found a towel to drape round her shoulders, but it covered very little. One of the men from the big house party engaged her in conversation, speaking with a faint middle-European accident.

‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘I’d love a dip.’

‘Why don’t you?’

‘I’m too old for that sort of thing. And then it would get into the papers, and there’d be a fuss.’

‘Are you someone famous, then?’ said Pamela, letting the towel slip open a little more.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But once, before the war, I was a king. Now I am an ex-king. I would like to see you privately. Will you give me your phone number?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have one,’ Pamela said.

‘If I was still king,’ he said sadly, ‘you would have a phone number.’

Later they put their clothes back on and drove back to the cottage by the river. Night had now fallen. They all had another vodka and Stephen proposed a game of Ghosts.

‘It’s very easy. We spread out in the trees. Then you have to creep up on someone and give them a fright.’

There was very little light between the trees, and the game quickly became genuinely scary. Pamela moved about, looking to all sides, and thought she saw someone, and then lost them again. So after a very short time she came to a stop by a big tree and stood and waited, trembling.

All her senses were in a state of heightened alert. She felt she had never lived until now. She longed for someone to creep up on her and … and what?

A sharp scream sounded from elsewhere in the woods, followed by soft laughter. Then came the crashing of running feet. She moved cautiously around the trunk of her protecting tree. Then she sensed there was someone behind her.

‘Beautiful ghost,’ said a voice.

She turned round. It was André.

He gazed at her, not moving. In the darkness it seemed possible to remain like this, looking, not speaking, caught in an intense stillness. She could barely make out his face.

Then Eugene burst out of the trees, bellowing.

‘Boo! Boo!’

Stephen could be heard calling them. And so the game ended, and one by one the guests made their way back to the cottage.

Pamela hardly slept that night. She was on fire with excitement. She felt as if she had stepped out of one life and into another, a life that was more brightly lit, more intensely lived. In this new life, she possessed power.

Of course in the end it was all about sex. Pamela was not a fool. She understood that this was what all men wanted. But she herself had never had sex, nor had she yet felt anything she could identify as sexual desire, so the physical aspects remained remote to her. And yet her body trembled. Her skin glowed. She loved the sensation of men’s gaze on her body. She desired desire.

Christine fascinated her. She imagined her standing naked in Murray’s club accepting the lustful gaze of strangers. What did that feel like? Pamela wriggled in her bed as she imagined herself on that stage. In her fantasy there was no sequinned G-string. She was entirely naked, and she was able to move. She strutted past the tables at which the rich, sophisticated men sat in silence, and their eyes devoured her, but not one of them was permitted to reach out and touch.

Their eyes implored her, as André’s had done. What could she tell them? What were they to do for her? She had no answer. As yet she had too little experience, no experience at all. She knew only that some man, somehow, someday, would wake her from her trance of youth.

‘Make me love you,’ she said to her unknown lover. ‘Make me want to die for love.’

*

In the morning she came down late to find only Stephen up. He had made a pot of coffee, and was sitting in a silk bathrobe in the open doorway, drinking coffee and looking out at the river.

‘How is Miss Pamela this morning?’ he said.

‘Half awake,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t planning on staying the night. I didn’t bring any overnight things.’

‘So did you have to sleep in your birthday suit?’

‘Well, in my knickers.’

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I shall get overexcited.’

But he didn’t sound excited. He sounded languid. She poured herself a mug of coffee, pulled up a chair beside him, and lit herself a cigarette. She was realising what Christine had meant when she said Stephen was very well behaved. He was safe; for all his
pinga grande
.

‘Glad you came?’ he said.

‘Very.’

‘They’re not a bad crowd.’

‘I feel quite out of my depth,’ said Pamela. ‘I know it’s all just fun. But does it ever get serious?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Stephen. ‘I brought Bronwen here when she was still modelling. Now she’s married to Billy Astor.’

Pamela found this confusing. In the other world, the world of her parents, male desire was channelled into marriage. But here, in this riverside Garden of Eden, men and women were naked and unashamed.

‘To be honest,’ said Stephen, ‘I’m not sure I did Bronwen any favours there. It’s not easy being Lady Astor. And he is twenty-three years older than her.’

‘What about Christine?’ said Pamela.

‘Oh, Christine. She’s virtually uneducated, you know? But she knows more than any girl I’ve ever met.’

‘What do you mean? Knows what?’

‘How men work. How to get what she wants. But she’s no gold-digger. She wants to have fun, and she wants to be looked after, but she’s as likely to sleep with a roadsweeper as a duke.’

Pamela was mystified.

‘Why? What is it she wants?’

‘You’ll have to ask her that.’

Christine herself now appeared, bleary-eyed, wearing only a long man’s shirt. She stroked Stephen’s shoulder.

‘Morning, darling.’

‘Pamela wants to know what it is you want.’

‘Coffee,’ Christine said.

Then Eugene appeared, and the room was filled with noise and laughter.

‘Stephen, my friend. I have been thinking. You must introduce me to Lord Mountbatten. He is Chief of Defence Staff. He can tell me many things.’

‘I don’t know him, old chum.’

‘What nonsense is this! You know everybody!’

‘I believe he did hear about me, when I was working as an osteo in the Army in India. He was a great help, actually. But I never met him.’

‘So arrange to meet! I must be his friend.’

‘What kind of spy do you call yourself?’ Stephen appealed to the others. ‘Aren’t spies meant to operate undercover? You can’t just go up to the enemy and say you want to be his friend.’

‘Why not? We must love one another or die!’

‘Oh, Eugene! You’re quoting Auden.’

‘Am I?’

Eugene embraced Stephen, kissing him on both cheeks.

‘That is beautiful, Stephen, and it is true.’

Pamela asked Stephen to drive her home. It was now past eleven on Sunday morning, and it had finally occurred to her
that Hugo and Harriet would be worried about her. She made her goodbyes to the others. André was still not up.

In the car heading into town they talked about Christine.

‘I never knew girls could be like that,’ said Pamela.

‘Ah, Christine is special,’ said Stephen. ‘No one owns Christine.’

‘But she has boyfriends?’

‘Certainly. Men fight over her. But she doesn’t care.’

‘How can she not care?’

‘She’s not the possessive type. Sex doesn’t really interest her. But then, a lot of girls are like that. The bed part of it does nothing for them. Not very surprising when you think how useless most men are in that department.’

‘So why does she do it?’

‘It’s how she gets by. Before she started at Murray’s she was working in a dress shop. She got bored, she wanted more. More fun, more pretty things. You can’t blame her.’

‘Oh, no. I don’t blame her.’

Pamela’s thoughts went all the other way. It seemed to her that Christine had got too little, not too much. This power that Christine possessed seemed to Pamela to be like a weapon of limitless force. So armed, the world lay at your feet.

Stephen said, ‘I wouldn’t follow Christine’s example, if I were you.’

‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Have a little fun. Break a few hearts. Then find yourself a good man to love, and settle down with him.’

‘And then what?’

‘After marriage? There is no life after marriage. That’s the happy ending.’

Pamela thought then of André. Eerily, Stephen read her thoughts.

‘I think you made quite a hit with André.’

‘But who is André?’ said Pamela. ‘He hardly said a word.’

‘André Tillemans. He inherited a large part of a large fortune. Steel, I believe. His passion is art, eighteenth-century miniatures in particular. He’s recently bought a house in Mayfair. He isn’t married.’

‘I wonder why not.’

‘He’s never had what you might call a lady friend, as long as I’ve known him. Plenty of girls have had a shot at him, but no one’s got him.’

This had the effect of raising his status even higher in Pamela’s eyes.

‘By all means enjoy his company,’ said Stephen. ‘Just don’t expect too much.’

‘I don’t expect anything,’ said Pamela.

‘He’s planning a party for his new house. Would you like to go?’

‘What sort of a party?’

‘There’s only one sort of party, isn’t there? Lots of guests. Lots of drink. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes.’

‘I’m not sure I have anything to wear.’

‘My dear, you could wear a sack and you’d be the most heavenly creature in the room.’

‘Oh, Stephen. You are sweet.’

‘I shall arrange it. I’ll tell André you accept.’

He dropped her off on Hammersmith Road and she walked back up Brook Green to the Caulder house. It was early afternoon on Sunday and all the family were at home. She let herself in with the key she had been given. Hugo came rushing wildeyed into the hall.

‘Where in God’s name have you been?’

‘At Susie’s. I told you.’

‘Not all night! You never said all night!’

‘We got talking. It was late.’

‘And you never thought of phoning? My God, Pamela!’

‘I am eighteen, you know.’

Harriet called from the front room.

‘Is it Pamela? Is she all right?’

‘Yes. She’s fine.’

‘I don’t see why you have to get so worked up,’ said Pamela, simulating anger to cover her guilt. ‘I don’t see why you have to treat me like a child.’

Hugo gave her an agonised look.

‘I know you’re not a child, Pamela.’

Pamela stared back, and as she looked at his exhausted features she understood. Hugo, her father’s business partner, who had known her almost all her life, was staring at her as André had stared at her, with a kind of hunger in his eyes.