So before long we smiled again, and moved gently apart, and went to sleep instead; and we slept untroubled, like babes-in-the-wood who knew their way both round and out, until the sun went down and the cool relief of twilight returned to our earth.
When we awoke, yawning, thirsty, bone-happy, we clasped hands and wandered once more out of the forest, as good as when we went in. Perhaps there were not many people in the world who would have believed us; and there was one on hand who patently did not. This was the small attendant boy. I gave him some more money as we climbed into the car; but – unfair, suspicious, prurient boy! – he watched us go with shadowed eyes, seemed rather shocked, like Cupid who feared he had only been serving as Pandarus after all. The gulf of doubt between the generations had never seemed wider than at that moment.
The way back was the way onwards. It was eight o’clock by the time we had regained coastal civilisation, and after a brief parting to put on some clothes more suitable to the conformist trend (it was a long time, a very long time, since I had thought:
The next time I take these off
…) we dined once again at my hotel. Tonight it was a quieter retreat; the revellers had gone somewhere else, and we could sit in private solitude, under the trees which were once more our own, and talk without intrusion, without raising our voices above a companionable murmur.
Susan had chosen to wear red, that night, and she had chosen right; no matter from what angle – and she afforded them all – she seemed to sum up the very shape and colour and texture of desire. When she saw me staring at her, in admiration and all sorts of other things, she said: ‘This is the third of my three dresses,’ and I answered: ‘Then they’ve just lasted us out,’ and she mimed the violin-playing motion, in mockery again, yet in collusion.
She was wearing the diamond bracelet also, and making unashamed play with it, as if the time for secrets – whether between us and the world, or between herself and me – was now coming to an end. It was a very agreeable way to be given the good news.
After dinner we walked along the beach, in and out of the shadows, in and out of the mounting tide, and when the mood took us we stopped and coupled and kissed. This time the kissing was different. It was as though she were saying: You are hungry? – so am I. Women can be as hungry as men … I had never known – or had forgotten – that there could be such willing and wanton co-operation, in so simple a thing as an open-sky embrace.
The word ‘professional’ slipped into my mind, and was quietly buried again. If one single fraction of this was assumed, if she was doing any sort of job on me, I didn’t want to know about it.
‘Why so sweet to me?’ I asked her, at the end of one memorable bout.
‘I suppose because now I like you enough.’
‘What made that happen?’
‘Just the way I am. Just the way you are … You’re strong tonight. Strong all over.’
‘That’s consolidated Steele.’ We had reached the farthest margin of the beach, under a rising moon; the only way back was now homewards, and I was ready to take it. ‘I would be very sorry,’ I confided, ‘if any of it went to waste.’
‘We mustn’t let that happen, must we?’ She was looking round her, at the moon, the lapping tide, the line of palm trees along the foreshore; then she rose on tiptoe to kiss me, and she was all warmth, all yielding softness. ‘What a beautiful night to make up one’s mind … It’s no good at my place, Johnny.’
‘Come back to mine, then.’
‘Won’t they object?’
‘Not if we’re absolutely quiet.’
‘Keep reminding me of that,’ she said softly. ‘I could forget.’
She was extraordinarily talented, as I had known she would be; from the moment when, naked in the half darkness, she allowed her face to take on the divine, surrendering silliness of love, while her superb body lay waiting for my capture, she had not ceased to tremble, to excite, to move like warm quicksilver, to kindle and to assuage. I forgot all else, first in wild enjoyment of this invasion, then in a more lingering
reprise
which presently achieved the same frank end.
I could not be quite sure that she shared this abandon. Sometimes, in those moments of acute awareness which illumined our long night, I thought I could detect in her a sort of detachment, as if she felt it was not her province to enjoy, only to serve the tender necessities of love. I never had to caution her to be quiet; indeed, it was she who at one moment laid her fingers gently on my lips, and whispered: ‘You’ll wake the baby,’ in amused, reluctant discipline. She was keeping her head, and it was just as well that this was so, since I was intent on losing mine.
I did not find out, till much later, the reason which lay at the core of this faint detachment; and I was not at all disposed to raise the topic, at such a moment, though my motives were entirely respectable – I wanted to return all her lavish courtesies, in the same measure. But she was not complaining; she was moving like a wild stream, she was clenching my exultant body as if it were the last prize left on earth … I need only take delight in the fact that she was there, to hold and to have, exactly when she was wanted; and being beautiful, agile and utterly unconstrained, she was, on that first night and for many nights thereafter, wanted a great deal.
Some time after dawn we walked back to her hotel together, plodding across the sands with the relaxed, wandering gait of all disbursed lovers at five o’clock in the morning. She was notably pale, and so, I felt, was I; but she looked very beautiful, very languid, very much mine, with that recognisable air of setback which could only be a source of pride to the executioner.
We stopped to kiss halfway, but it was very much a token salute; if the entire band of the Royal Marines had struck up their
fortissimo
version of
Anchors Aweigh!
, I could not have hoisted a butterfly net. At her hotel steps, we played a subdued balcony scene.
‘Thank you for all that, Susan.’
‘Thank you for all
that …
People are dead wrong about the English. Refer them to me.’
‘I’ll do nothing of the sort … Are you going to sleep now?’
‘Yes. And I can recommend it. Aren’t you really tired, Johnny?’
‘I might snatch a brief nap. But towards lunchtime …’
‘We’ll see.’ She reached up, and kissed my cheek briefly. ‘That’s for now … Tell me something. How do you like me to do my hair?’
‘Normal. Smooth. Simple. You’ve got a beautiful shape of head. It doesn’t need to be churned up.’
‘All right,’ she answered, with a curious air of gravity, as if she were agreeing a treaty which would bind us both for a hundred years. ‘From the next time I see you. Good night. Good morning.’
I walked back even more slowly, scuffing the wet sand, observing what seemed to be an entirely different kind of sunrise. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t collecting seashells any more. I was conscious of the usual male
tristesse
, and accepted it, and took good care to discount it.
This had been the first time, damn it, in six long years. A substantial record had been broken, a citadel of sorts breached and overthrown. A little while ago, I would have been very surprised. Now I was not, and that also was a measure of decline.
But beyond this small moment of mourning, the pangs of conscience could not and did not pierce very deep. Susan had been much too exciting.
She never stopped being exciting, not even when she moved into the cabin next door to mine, and the engagement became continuous. (My hotel, true to form, turned a benevolent eye on this arrangement, when I proposed it; perhaps they had very little choice – its general discouragement would deal a fatal blow to the industry.) She never stopped being exciting, and I did not cease to exploit the fact, on all possible occasions.
We seemed, in those days of dream and desire, to have everything going for us. The sun was constant in a cloudless sky; the sea washed us clean and innocent and as good as new, each morning; the afternoons were gentle pauses in time, yet full of subtle reminder, promising us all that we wished, and very soon, and then and there, if we had a mind for it; the nights were cool, and secret, and ours. At such signals, manhood returned with the full flood of virility, and a pounding eagerness to prove it.
This revival of mine had been instant and inevitable; I had only to put my arms round her to be reminded of a whole range of forgotten tastes and savours. It had a good deal to do with the feel of a different body, which, as always, made for the total renewal of many urges. Susan was taller than Kate, and put together differently, and, at twenty, a full twelve years younger; however little one wanted to make comparisons between the old love and the new, they were being stated all the time, by the response of one’s own body, one’s own instinct and appetite.
When we made love, it was a sensual contact between two people new to each other, never yet explored; and it was rendered wildly exciting by this novelty. She could drive me nearly frantic by a certain movement, or sometimes by a certain lack of it; it was as if she could invent, with her body, things I had to have, things I had to do; and she knew this, and she practised the fluent magic like some goddess-conjurer, dispensing gifts from her liberal store to those who had divined the right answer, and promises to those who had been tricked or blinded.
Sometimes, when in post-operative mood I tried to analyse this to her, and perhaps became over-involved in the minutiae of speculation, or clinically dull, she would smile like an indulgent teacher, and then contribute a chiding, realistic note: ‘You know, one of these days you’re going to talk yourself out of bed.
The reasons for things don’t matter!
’ And if the tide was right she would show me straight away that they did not matter, and indeed they did not.
She was a funny mixture of a girl. Many of the things I had expected, she was not. I had met beautiful girls, by the raftload, during the last few years; and beautiful girls were not my favourite characters, except to stare at when I had nothing better to do.
For the most part, these creatures grew unbearably spoiled; living on their looks, monstrously proud of them, scared to death of losing them; turning like animated toys towards every mirror in sight, as if to springs of water in the desert; absolutely self-centred, only happy if everyone in any given room was concentrating on them and them alone; and liable to turn into sulky bitches if this were not so.
Susan was not at all like this, though – in the category of good looks she was well entitled to be. She did not seem to give a damn who stared at her, or who did not, or what was happening to the current of her career, or how well she was doing in society, or in love, or in the span of life itself. She was generous, and outgoing, all the time; she could give her undivided attention to another person, and enjoy the process, instead of demanding the same concentration upon herself, as of sacred right.
She seemed content with whatever took place next, good or bad, hopeful or daunting; if she were broke one day, then tomorrow would be better – and if not better, then different anyway, and worth a girl’s living, a girl’s welcoming smile. She had to be very disappointed, or misused, or angry, to take a stand against fate in the form of man.
She knew that I was a celebrity of sorts, she thought that I had a lot of money; naive or not, I was ready to believe that this had made little difference to her, in the realms of seduction, and none at all in its lavish catalogue of sequels.
‘Everyone has the same income in bed,’ she once said, at a moment to match the metaphor. ‘A rich man doesn’t feel rich. He either feels good or bad, gentle or rough, sweet or mean.’ She listed, in her customary specific language, some of the other things which money could not replace. ‘What I like about you,’ she concluded, ‘is that you always do it with
you
.’
I suppose she had admired this element in a lot of men, that it was what she was always looking for, that this was why she had sacked the odious character who had brought her down to Barbados in the first place. Generally speaking, she was very fond of the male animal, by inference as well as by candid confession; and this was another thing which surprised me, for a particular reason.
It became clear to me, before very long, that in spite of apparent ardours, in spite of a leaping sensuality, she never actually turned the trick; and no divining rod was needed to establish this, once I started watching her progress in love, once I began to take some trouble. At the start, I did take a lot of trouble with her, because I was deeply grateful for all she was giving me, and I thought she deserved her return; and there were also the customary promptings of vanity which, if they did not separate the men from the boys, at least gave them all the same target to shoot at.
It did not work, and presently, in deep well-being and content, I grew lazy about it, and thought: ‘Hell, I don’t have to bother – it isn’t that sort of transaction.’ I tried to raise the question once, but all she said was: ‘Johnny, don’t
think!
’ and gave me, with prompt co-operation, something to take the place of thought.
I did not know whether she was being unselfish, or if this was all she wanted; I could not guess what impeded a consummation which, by her look and feel and touch, she might have been invented for. Before very long, I began to forget all about it, as she seemed to wish me to, and simply took the darling hand which had been dealt to me, and had a wild time with it.
If Susan really minded, if she missed something, if I was failing her in any particular way, she never showed it, never once withheld her cunning accommodation, and only spoke of it once again.
On a warm Barbados afternoon, when Susan lay asleep behind our slatted blinds, and I was trying to make the choice between waking her up, shaving, finishing the heel of a bottle of rum, or falling asleep myself, a letter came unexpectedly from Kate. It gave me a faint jolt – nothing worse – and then some news to which I lent all that I could muster in the way of dreamy, detached attention.